A European study shows an increase in cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, mainly in patients from countries of the former Soviet Union.
Wrongly regarded as a “disease of the past”, tuberculosis is once again worrying specialists. Even though the number of cases is declining in France (around 5,000 each year), a sudden increase in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR) to antibiotics, encountered mainly in patients born in countries of the former Soviet Union, has been observed in France in the last two years. According to a study published by Eurosurveillance and reported by the APM news agency, an average of 50 cases per year until 2010, doctors recorded 69 cases in 2011 and 92 in 2012.
Cases imported from Eastern countries
This increase was correlated with an increase in the number of cases imported from countries of the former USSR: 9 in 2006, 21 in 2011 and 47 in 2012. In 2012, they represented 50% of cases infected with a multidrug-resistant strain. The team at the Eurosurveillance center points in particular to patients from Georgia: while only 2 of them had been treated for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in France in 2006, they were 26 in 2012.
A public health problem
The authors of this study put forward in conclusion the hypothesis of immigration to France for medical reasons of which doctors should, according to them, be informed. Recall that MDR tuberculosis burst into French news at the end of 2012, with the discovery in several migrants from Eastern Europe of a particular form. Referred to the infectious diseases department at Pitié Salpètrière (Paris), these patients turned out to be carriers of a bacillus resistant to the usual anti-tuberculosis drugs, and therefore particularly difficult to treat.
“Tuberculosis is quite emblematic of a bacterium which, faced with antibiotics, tries to defend itself and becomes more resistant”, explained last March to why actor Prof. Jean-Paul Stahl, head of the infectious diseases department at Grenoble University Hospital. If patients are poorly monitored, they therefore have a high risk of developing a resistant form of the disease. Following the discovery of these extraordinary patients, the General Directorate of Health (DGS) announced at the end of January 2013 that the increase in forms of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR) was considered to be ” worrying in terms of public health ”in France.
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