MODELLING THE CONTAINMENT OF MYCOBACTERIUM TUBERCULOSIS STRAIN

Abstract

Drug resistance in mycobacterium Tuberculosis (MTB) undermines the efficacy of Tuberculosis treatment in individuals and of Tuberculosis control programmes in populations. Non compliance of anti Tuberculosis drugs can result in drug resistance MTB strain. Some fluctuation tests demonstrate that mutation to resistance is 2.56 X 10^-8 and 2.25 X 10^-10 per bacterium per generation respectively for isonized and rifampicin. Here, we propose a model for the growth of initial drug sensitive bacilli population taking into consideration conferred mutations. This was validated against experimental data. The model shows that if the total number of the MTB strain is less than 39,062,500 and 4,444,444,444 with selective effect to isoniazid and rifampicin respectively, the explosion can eventually be contained. This is far less than clinical bacterial load of 10^10. This finding may also help explain the pharmacodynamic properties of the "first line" anti Tuberculosis drugs.