First-line drug resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Throughout history, natural products have been utilized to treat a variety of diseases; cinchona tree containing quinine to treat malaria, penicillin for the treatment of infectious diseases, and a wide variety of others. Since the discovery of penicillin by Fleming in 1929, a large number of antibacterial agents have been developed and have had a huge impact on human health. However, due to widespread excessive dispensing of antibiotics, certain bacterial pathogens have developed resistant strains via various mutations in their genomic setup. One of such pathogens is Mycobacterium tuberculosis, hence the study. This study aims at describing the epidemiology of resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, its risk factors and potential control strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. PubMed, BMC and other reliable databases were searched for English research articles published from January 2015 to December 2020 reporting on the molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Due to lack of credible data from all Sub-Saharan African countries and first-line drugs, the study was streamlined to the most populous countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, 17 of which were considered in this study, and the two most common first-line drugs (i.e., Rifampicin and Isoniazid). A total of 54 research articles were thoroughly reviewed for the final analysis. Isoniazid had higher monoresistance (8.5%) than Rifampicin (3.6%). Tuberculosis (TB) Monoresistance was highest in Morocco (54%) and lowest in Mali (4.2%), while multidrug resistance highest in Senegal (58.1%), and lowest in Cameroon (1.1%).