Phenotypic and genotypic drug sensitivity profiles of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and associated factors in northeastern Ethiopia

Abstract Background Tuberculosis is a devastating and a deadly disease despite the novel advances in its diagnostic tools and drug therapy. Drug resistant Mycobacterium contributes a great share to tuberculosis mortality. Status of drug resistance and patients’ awareness toward the disease is unknown in northeastern Ethiopia. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the phenotypic and genotypic drug sensitivity patterns and associated factors in Oromia Special Zone and Dessie Town, northeastern Ethiopia. Methods In a cross-sectional study, 384 smear positive tuberculosis cases were recruited and Löwenstein-Jensen culture was done. The performance of GenoTypic MTBDRplus assay using the conventional BACTEC MGIT 960 as a "gold standard" was determined. Drug resistant strains were identified using spoligotyping. Pearson Chi-square test was used to determine the association of drug sensitivity test and tuberculosis type, lineages, dominant strains and clustering of the isolates. For the assessment of patients’ awareness towards the disease questionnaires were used. Results A fair agreement was found between MTBDRplus assay and the conventional MGIT test in detecting the Mycobacterium tuberculosis with sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of 94.2%, 30.2%, 68.4% and 76.5%, respectively. The MTBDRplus assay detected 16.8% (16/95) of the isolates as drug resistant and MGIT detected a comparable number 15.9% (11/69) as resistant. Cohen's kappa value showed almost a perfect agreement between the two testing methods in detecting rifampicin (sensitivity 100% and specificity 98.3%) and multi-drug resistance (sensitivity 83.3% and specificity 100%). Spoligotyping identified 76.5% (13/17) of the drug resistant isolates as Euro-American and family 33 as the predominant family. Significant association was observed between drug resistant isolates and the dominant strains (χ2: 34.861; p = 0.040). Majority of the patients heard about tuberculosis as compared to drug resistant Mycobacterium. Conclusion Higher magnitude of drug resistance was found in the study area. The GenoTypic MDRTBplus assay had an acceptable drug sensitivity testing performance. Patients’ awareness towards the disease specifically to the resistant Mycobacterium was low.