Diagnosis and Treatment Outcomes of Tuberculosis in Relation to Gender and HIV STATUS in South Benin
Tuberculosis (TB) has been a serious
burden to mankind over many generations and remains a major global health
concern. Some research has shown that HIV is the most
important risk factor for TB and is also known to negatively impact treatment
outcomes of co-infected TBHIV patients. However, in Benin, little
is known about the influence of both gender and HIV-status on diagnostic
patterns and treatment outcomes of tuberculosis patients. So the authors in
this study aimed to assess whether differences in gender and HIV status affected
diagnostic patterns and treatment outcomes of TB patients.
The authors
conducted a retrospective cohort study of
patients registered in 2013 and 2014 in the three largest TB Basic Management
Units in south Benin. In total, 2694 TB patients were
registered in 2013 and 2014, of whom 1700 (63.1%) were males and 994 (36.9%)
were females. Case notification rates were higher in males compared with females (96
vs 53/100,000 inhabitants). The male to female ratio was 1:1 in HIV positive
patients, but was 2:1 among HIV negative cases.
The results
indicated that in HIV-positive patients, there were no differences in TB types
between men and women. In HIV-negative patients, there were significantly
higher proportions of females with clinically diagnosed pulmonary TB (p = 0.04)
and extrapulmonary TB (p < 0.001). Retreatment TB was 4.65 times higher amongst
males compared with females. For new bacteriologically confirmed pulmonary TB,
no differences were observed in treatment outcomes between genders in the HIV
positive group; but significantly more unfavorable outcomes were reported among
HIV negative males, with higher rates of failure (p < 0.001) and
loss-to-follow up (p = 0.02).
In conclusion, the
study has shown that overall TB notification rates were higher in males than in
females in south Benin, with more females co-infected with HIV. And unfavorable
outcomes were more common in HIV-negative males. Further studies are needed to
explain the country specific underlying reasons for these gender differences in
TB case notifications in Benin and to assess if there are any variations across
the different regions.
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Image by rtcmedia, from Flickr-cc.
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