Bailey Green

Biology Lab Thursdays 10am

Mohamed Jama

November 16th, 2017

Summary of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is one of the most common leading causes of death worldwide, it is

estimated from the World Health Organization that over ten million people have been tested

positive for tuberculosis and almost two million have died from Tuberculosis in 2015, ten

percent of those results make up children. Tuberculosis is a serious infectious disease that

normally affects the function of your lungs. Symptoms include; coughing up blood, fever, chills,

chest pain, fatigue there are a lot of symptoms that could easily be confused with some

diseases that are not as serious, so be careful and pay close attention.

In China, they started to have a public health concern. A study done in 2006-2015 they

took 36 tuberculosis prevention institutes and have over 14,000 new cases of tuberculosis.

6.9% of the children tested had what they are calling drug resistant tuberculosis.

The tuberculosis study was conducted in 13 municipal-level local health departments,

21 county-level hospitals, and 2 province-level hospitals. All the data was recorded, and they

discovered some types were reactive to many of the known medications but some were only

reactive to one or two and some were not reactive to any of them making them drug resistant.
 When it came to their statistical analysis they analyzed the changes in the proportions

of the resistance each type had to the medications that were given. Watching the linear

regression and having a 95% confidence interval comparing the statistical results pulled from

the adults and the children. The medications all had different results and had a different effect

on each of the different types of Tuberculous. They found that it was most common in males

older than eighteen years old and also noticed that some of these males had underlying heart

conditions, this could possibly be an underlying factor as to why they werent reactive to the

medications being used.

This experiment cannot represent for the world, because it did have its limits. It was

only done in the eastern coast of China, also because they did not want to risk infecting

children they only had children that have confirmed tuberculous tests be able to participate.

Another factor was that the medical records and history they received was not full detailed.

They did not know education, family history, background information, living conditions, and if

there was any genetic mutations that could cause the disease.

In conclusion, this experiment resulted in the idea that this has been being spread

airborne, meaning it could be easily transmitted from one person to another easily though the

air. They are not exactly sure how to efficiently stop this from spreading but are working on

some potential ideas. By the year 2025 they want to reach a zero-fatality rate for children that

are diagnosed with tuberculous. Understanding the complications, prevention techniques, and

the long-term trends will help them to find better treatments and better techniques to reach

that 2015 zero death goal.