title: A study on demographic characteristics of drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates in Belarus.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  A descriptive study of drug-resistance patterns by age group and among culture-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) patients referred to the Research Institute for Pulmonology and Phthisiology of Belarus between January 2007 and January 2008.
  
  
  METHODS
  Drug susceptibility tests were performed for first- and second-line anti-tuberculosis drugs. Patients were clustered into five resistance categories: mono-resistant (Mono); multi-drug resistant (MDR); all first-line drug resistance (MDR+ES); and extensively drug resistant (XDR). The patients were divided into primary and secondary and into six groups based on age in years (<15, 15-24, 25-44, 45-54, 55-65, and >65).
  
  
  RESULTS
  An analysis was undertaken of information gathered from 934TB patients, of whom 660 were men (70.67±1.5%) and 274 were women (29.33±1.5%) (p<0.001). In the age group 25-65years, men outnumbered women between 2.7 and 9.0 times higher. Cases of secondary TB totaled 414 (52.02±1.77%), and primary cases totaled 382 (47.98±1.77%) (p>0.05); 756 of the patients were of working age, and 170 were of non-working age, of whom 570 men of working age (18-60years) and 188 women of working age (18-55years) participated. Males were significantly more likely to have MDR-TB than females. All cases with XDR-TB were older than 14years old.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  As Belarus is a high-burden MDR-TB country and treatment of drug-resistant TB is long and complicated, the findings of this study provided useful information to deliver effective community-based disease control measures and a proposed plane for the effective management of drug-resistant TB at the national level.
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Pulmonology and Phthisiology, Belarus.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Surkova
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Pulmonology and Phthisiology, Belarus.
authors.forename: H L
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Horevich
authors.affiliation: Belarusian Research Institute for Epidemiology and Microbiology, Belarus.
authors.forename: L P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Titov
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Pulmonology and Phthisiology, Belarus.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sahalchyk
authors.affiliation: Tuberculosis and Pediatric Infectious Disease Research Center, Arak University of Medical Sciences, Arak, Iran. Electronic address: mmatinam81@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arjomandzadegan
authors.affiliation: Payamnoor University, Iran.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Alinejad
authors.affiliation: Payame Noor University, 19395-4697, Tehran, I.R. of Iran.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sadrnia
keywords: Age; Belarus; Demographic characteristics; Multi-drug resistance; Sex; Tuberculosis