Though generally curable, tuberculosis (TB) is becoming increasingly resistant to commonly used antibiotics. Drug-resistant and multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB is a consequence of monotherapy, insufficient drug therapy and national TB control programs. The present study was designed to reveal the resistance to major antimicrobial drugs (isoniazid [INH], streptomycin [SM], ethambutol [EMB], and rifampicin [RIF]) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated from the respiratory specimens of TB patients in Duzce, Turkey. A total of 62 TB patients (46 male, 16 female; age: 17-75 mean: 42±15.9) were included in the study; 52 (83.8%) were new cases and susceptible to all anti-TB drugs, while 10 (16.2%) were previously treated cases. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests were performed by the proportion method in Löwenstein-Jensen medium. Fifty-two of the 62 (83.8%) isolated M. tuberculosis strains were found to be susceptible to all drugs, and 7 (11.3%), 5 (8%), and 3 (4.8%) were resistant to SM, INH, and RIF, respectively; 3 (4.8%) were MDR. There were no EMB-resistant strains. The results of this study show the presence of drug-resistant and MDR strains of TB at Duzce in the northwest part of Turkey.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects one-third of the world’s population (1), and tuberculosis (TB) still accounts for a large number of deaths and great morbidity worldwide. The disease, while generally curable, is becoming increasingly resistant to commonly used antibiotics (2). The modern era of TB began in 1946 with a demonstration of the efficacy of streptomycin (SM). In 1952, the much more effective drug isoniazid (INH) became available, making TB curable in the great majority of patients, and in 1970, rifampicin (RIF) came to be recognized as at least equal to INH. Drug-resistant (DR)-TB has been reported since the early days of the introduction of chemotherapy, however, the global magnitude of DR-TB has not been well studied until recently (2). The detection of M. tuberculosis and its drug susceptibility pattern is increasingly being recognized as an important component of global TB control (3), and it is critical to test the drug susceptibility of TB bacilli in order to guide therapy (4). The first survey of drug resistance was released in 1998 and included data from 35 countries (5). In 1992, the Third World Congress on TB concluded that there was little recent information on the global magnitude of multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB, defined as resistance to at least INH and RIF. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report of 2004, the population of Turkey was 70,318,000, the total number of TB cases reported to the WHO was 18,043, and the case notification rate was 26 per 100,000 people (6). Based on the data collected from several local and regional studies, the emergence and rapid growth of MDR-TB are still a matter of