Prevalence and Risk Factors for Active Tuberculosis in HIV-Negative Individuals: A Retrospective Study on the Progression from Latent to Active Tuberculosis in Rwanda

Abstract

• Background:

Tuberculosis is among the most widely spread and serious of all human infectious diseases. About one-third of the world's population is estimated to be infected by Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, in whom active Tuberculosis develops in nine million persons each year. This study aimed at identifying the associated factors to the progression of Latent Tuberculosis infection to Active Tuberculosis in HIV negative people and identifying the prevalence of Tuberculosis in HIV negative.

• Methods:

The factors were obtained by reviewing the files of patients who were Tuberculosis positive in the last two years from 2017 to 2018.

• Result:

The findings of this study showed that the factors that might be associated were: age, sex, being aged above 55 (0.9%), being in close contact with a Tuberculosis positive person (7.5%), collective housing (8.4%), drinking alcohol (7.1%), smoking (6.6%), living in Kigali district (4.7%), imprisonment (0.9%), some participants had more than two factors (2.8%), mostly drinking alcohol and smoking at the same time. Unfortunately, only 38.9% of the participants had a known factor that might have led to the activation of Tuberculosis and the remaining 61.1% of the cases had no specified factor. The association was found to be statistically significantly (p<0.005). The prevalence of HIV negative with TB positive was found to be 68.8%.

• Conclusion:

The study recommended that the country should increase awareness of risk factors of Tuberculosis rather than HIV and set a specialized surveillance system even for HIV negative with TB positive.