ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Clinical Infectious Diseases
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2025.1586938
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancements in Diversity and Drug Resistance Mechanisms in Mycobacterial DiseasesView all 7 articles
Prevalence and molecular characterization of drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Heyuan City in China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Medical laboratory，Heyuan Key Laboratory of Molecular Diagnosis & Disease Prevention and Treatment, Doctors Station of Guangdong province,, Heyuan, Guangdong, China
- 2Department of Clinical Laboratory, Heyuan People's Hospital,, Heyuan, Guangdong, China
- 3Department of Integrated Enforcement, Heyuan Health Supervision Institute, Heyuan, Guangdong, China
- 4Medical laboratory, Heyuan Key Laboratory of Molecular Diagnosis & Disease Prevention and Treatment, Doctors Station of Guangdong province, Heyuan People's Hospital, Heyuan, China
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Purpose: To evaluate the prevalence and drug resistance patterns among patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) in Heyuan City, China.All 291 patients registered between April 2021 and March 2023 were tested for drug resistance, and information about their medical history and demographics was collected directly from the hospital's computer database. Eight genes were analyzed for mutations associated with resistance to five antituberculosis drugs: the katG, ahpC, and inhA promoters for isoniazid (INH); rpoB for rifampicin (RIF); embB for ethambutol (EMB); gyrA for fluoroquinolones (FQs); and rrs and rpsL for streptomycin (STR). All strains were genotyped using fluorescence melting curve analysis.In Heyuan, 24.4% (71/291) of patients with treatment-resistant TB were resistant to at least one drug. Following are the rates of general resistance to each drug: RIF (28/272, 10.29%), INH (38/274, 13.87%), FQs (10/259, 3.86%), EMB (20/248, 8.06%), and STR (15/150, 10.00%). Age or gender had no statistically significant impact on the likelihood of developing drug resistance. Nevertheless, a statistically significant difference was observed between the three strategies of drug resistance testing, AFB testing, and MTB antibody testing. There were 48 cases of single-drug resistance and 23 cases of multiple-drug resistance among the 71 drug-resistant patients. Eight genes had 127 alterednucleotide sequences, with KatG315 (20.47%) having the most significant incidence of mutations. The top three mutated genes were rpoB (32.28%), katG (23.62%), and embB (15.75%).These findings may be helpful in Heyuan City for the quick molecular identification of DR-TB isolates in clinical samples.
Keywords: Drug Resistance, gene mutation, MDR-TB, Fluorescence melting curve analysis, Heyuan
Received: 03 Mar 2025; Accepted: 20 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Qiu, Ma, Liu and Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiangxing Zeng, Medical laboratory, Heyuan Key Laboratory of Molecular Diagnosis & Disease Prevention and Treatment, Doctors Station of Guangdong province, Heyuan People's Hospital, Heyuan, China
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