What to know
- Presentation Day/Time: Thursday, April 24, 10:55 am–12:20 pm
- Presenter: Christine "Annie" Wang, DVM, PhD, MPH, EIS officer assigned to the Arizona Department of Health Services, Pima County Health Department
What did we do?
- In August 2024, the Pima County Health Department TB Clinic received a patient with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). We sought to identify potential transmission and determine the best treatment regimens based on susceptibility testing to prevent further transmission.
What did we find?
- The 59-year-old patient was born in a country with higher TB incidence and reported a history of smoking, prior TB infection, and treatment before arriving in the U.S. in 1991.
- The patient's six close contacts had negative initial TB tests and are pending retesting.
- Combined laboratory results confirmed MDR-TB warranting treatment with bedaquiline, pretomanid, linezolid, and moxifloxacin (BPaLM), but identified a genetic mutation with unknown effect on bedaquiline susceptibility.
- Twelve weeks after diagnosis, a laboratory determined the patient's MDR-TB was susceptible to bedaquiline.
Why does it matter?
- TB remains a leading infectious cause of illness and death worldwide. MDR-TB disease is a public health challenge for which BPaLM shows promise for effective treatment.
- However, BPaLM is more difficult to acquire than regimens for drug-susceptible TB, and knowledge about resistance mutations is limited.
***This presentation has updated data that will be shared at the EIS Conference.
Abstract Category: Antibiotic Resistance