2019 Focus--Antimicrobial Resistance

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the top ten causes of death worldwide, claiming more lives than HIV/AIDS does. Meanwhile, drug resistance can have a serious negative impact on TB patients, medical teams, and public health professionals during the course of TB treatment. Compared with drug-susceptible TB, which only takes 6 months to cure by a regular administration of medicines, the course of treatment of MDR-TB lasts about 20 months. Additionally, patients usually need second-line injectable agents that can lead to more side effects and long-term hospitalization in an isolated room. Due to the consequent social and psychological impacts, poor treatment results are more frequent in drugresistance TB than drug-susceptible TB.