Siberia, Russian Federation

• Main Authors: Svetlana Zhdanova, Scott K. Heysell, Oleg Ogarkov, Galina Boyarinova, Galina Alexeeva, Suporn Pholwat, Elena Zorkaltseva, Eric R. Houpt, Eugeniy Savilov
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sakha; Sakha Republic; Yakutia; Siberia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.407.3291; http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/19/10/pdfs/12-1108.pdf

Of 235 Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from patients who had not received tuberculosis treatment in the Irkutsk oblast and the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), eastern Siberia, 61 (26%) were multidrug resistant. A novel strain, S 256, clustered among these isolates and carried eis-related kanamycin resistance, indicating a need for locally informed diagnosis and treatment strategies. In 2010, tuberculosis (TB) prevalence in the Russian Federation was 136 cases per 100,000 population; the estimated proportion of multidrug resistance, defined as resistance to isoniazid and rifampin in the absence of prior treatment (primary MDR TB), was 18 % (1). However, at the subnational level, primary MDR TB might be highly variable; in oblasts or republics with continuous surveillance data, drug resistance varies from 5.4 % to 28.3 % (2). These data are predominantly from the western half of the country and do not include eastern Siberia. In 2009, in the Irkutsk oblast in eastern Siberia, TB prevalence was 373 cases per 100,000 population and HIV prevalence was among the highest in the Russian Federation (3,4). In contrast, in the sparsely populated neighboring Sakha Republic (Yakutia), TB prevalence was lower