“ An unwanted by-product of the expanded treatment program was the generation of new cases of drug-resistant TB…if we never had treated TB, there would be no drug resistance
— Is hole in DOTS policy playing a role in the evolution of an XDR-TB strain? Adherence to a flawed treatment plan may be worse than nonadhderence. In this article, researchers speculate that implementation of DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) – where an individual diagnosed with active infectious pulmonary TB takes a standardised combination of anti-TB chemotherapy during supervised treatment, developed as a means to improve adherence, may have hastened the developement of resistance in domr pathogenes. An individual may also acquire a strain of TB that already has some resistance to drugs used in its treatment. In the absence of drug susceptibility testing (DST), however, the anti-TB chemotherapy provided may well be suboptimal, leading to the development of further resistance.
