Prevalence of concomitant pulmonary tuberculosis in patients with newly diagnosed silicosis in a tertiary care center in South India

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3126/ajms.v14i1.47728

Keywords:

Silicosis; Silicotuberculosis; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Lung diseases; Prevalence

Abstract

Background: Long-term exposure to silica dust makes people prone for silicosis which raises the risk of the individual in developing pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). Silicosis is a progressive lung disease characterize with shortness of breath, cough, fever, and bluish skin, caused due to inhalation of crystalline silica dust found in abundance in sand, rock, and quartz.

Aims and Objectives: The disease is known to effect the functioning of macrophages making it unable to defend mycobacterium species, thus allowing the bacterium to invade and develop tuberculosis.

Materials and Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study is carried out to estimate the prevalence of PTB in newly diagnosed silicosis patients at Madurai Medical College, Madurai, Tamil Nadu. All the patients who got registered in Occupational Lung Diseases Registry from January 2016 to December 2021 are included in the study. Silicosis patients tested positive on sputum CBNAAT are considered as silicotubercular patients, whose prevalence is calculated.

Results: Our study included a total of 54 subjects (90.8% males and 8.2% female) with mean SD age of 38±6.7 years ranging from 26 to 53 years. Of which 22 patients, 40.7% tested positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) on sputum CBNAAT. The prevalence of MTB in among silicosis patients was found to be 40.7%.

Conclusions: Association of TB and silicosis is very strong with the prevalence of TB among silicosis patients as 40.7%. Our study also observed the male sex and elder age as elevated risk of developing silicotuberculosis. All the people getting exposed to silica dust need to be educated in the usage and usefulness of protective equipment.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Abstract
62
PDF
87

Downloads

Published

2023-01-01

How to Cite

Navaneethakrishnan Muthulakshmi, Saravanavasan Rajendran, & Kannan Muthuraman Alagappan. (2023). Prevalence of concomitant pulmonary tuberculosis in patients with newly diagnosed silicosis in a tertiary care center in South India. Asian Journal of Medical Sciences, 14(1), 75–80. https://doi.org/10.3126/ajms.v14i1.47728

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Original Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Asian Journal of Medical Sciences

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. The journal holds copyright and publishes the work under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license that permits use, distribution and reprduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. The journal should be recognised as the original publisher of this work.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).