Open AccessExtra-pulmonary tuberculosis in Saudi Arabia
Author(s) -
Fawzia E. Al-Otaibi,
Malak M El Hazmi
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
indian journal of pathology and microbiology/indian journal of pathology and microbiology
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.217
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 0974-5130
pISSN - 0377-4929
DOI - 10.4103/0377-4929.64327
Subject(s) - medicine , tuberculosis , pulmonary tuberculosis , extrapulmonary tuberculosis , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , young adult , retrospective cohort study , pediatrics , immunology , mycobacterium tuberculosis , pathology
Studies from developed countries have reported that extra-pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) is on the rise due to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic. However, similar studies from high-burden countries with low prevalence of HIV like Saudi Arabia are lacking. Therefore, we conducted this study to investigate demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with pulmonary and extra-pulmonary tuberculosis. A retrospective analysis was carried out on all patients (n=431) with a culture - proven diagnosis of tuberculosis seen at University teaching hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from January 2001 to December 2007. A total of 183 (42.5%) pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) and 248 (57.5%) extra-pulmonary TB (EPTB) cases were compared in terms of age, sex, and nationality. There were 372 Saudis (SA) (86.3%) and the remaining non-Saudis (NSA) 59 (13.7%). The age distribution of the PTB patients had a bimodal distribution. EPTB was more common at young age (20-29 years). The proportion of EPTB cases was significantly higher among NSA patients (72.9%) compared to SA patients (55.1%). Females had higher proportion (59.5%) of EPTB than males (55.6%). The most common site was lymph node tuberculosis (42%). In conclusion, our data suggest that EPTB was relatively common in younger age, female gender and NSA. Tuberculosis (TB) control program may target those populations for EPTB case-finding.