Malnutrition and Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Abstract

Sir—We read with interest the article by Oursler et al. [1] in which the authors concluded that comorbid illnesses and conditions, such as diabetes mellitus, renal failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and immunosuppression, are important predictors of mortality among patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). These observations confirm the findings of earlier reports [2, 3] and provide additional evidence that pulmonary TB continues to a have a significant associated mortality rate, even in industrialized nations where advanced medical technology is available. The authors also found that the clustering of pulmonary TB infections, as determined by DNA fingerprinting, was not an independent factor associated with death.