Is drug-resistant tuberculosis harder to cure? Treatment outcomes in Kazakhstan, who data for the cohorts of 2015-2022

Abstract

Kazakhstan has one of the highest shares of rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (TB) among new patients in the world. This paper compares, with public WHO data, the treatment outcomes of people treated for drug-susceptible TB (new and relapse cases, cohorts 2015-2023) and for drug-resistant TB (MDR/RR-TB together with the separately reported XDR cohorts, 2015-2022). Treatment success for drug-susceptible TB was 87.8-91.1% in every year; for drug-resistant TB it was 75.5-82.7%. In every cohort from 2016 to 2022 it was lower for drug-resistant TB, by 7.2 to 14.5 percentage points, and the share of patients who died was 1.3-1.9 times higher; the 2015 drug-susceptible cohort is not comparable with later years. In an exploratory comparison, the drug-resistant cohorts of 2021-2022 had the best results: 81.9% success against 76.2% in 2019-2020 and 77.4% in all cohorts of 2015-2020 pooled, although both years stay within the range expected from the earlier year-to-year variation; success for drug-susceptible TB was practically unchanged against 2019-2020 (+0.1 points). Of the 5.8-point rise against 2019-2020, the share without an evaluated outcome fell by 3.5 points and treatment failure by 1.5; the share who died hardly changed (11.5% and 11.2%), and among patients with an evaluated outcome success rose by 3.0 points. The improvement coincided with a jump in the share of drug-resistant patients started on bedaquiline, from 25% in 2020 to 89% in 2021. The data support the idea that drug-resistant TB is harder to cure, and are consistent with, but cannot prove, a role of the new drugs.

Keywords: tuberculosis, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, treatment outcomes, bedaquiline, Kazakhstan, WHO data

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Как цитировать

Sultanay Nursyila Is drug-resistant tuberculosis harder to cure? Treatment outcomes in Kazakhstan, who data for the cohorts of 2015-2022 // Central Asian Scientific Journal. – 2026. – No. 4(32), Vol. 2. – Pp. 130–139.