Factors influencing drug susceptible tuberculosis outcomes in Eastern Europe

Objective — to conduct a retrospective analysis of factors that affect the results of treatment of patients with tuberculosis. 
Materials and methods. A retrospective multi-center study was conducted on adult (> 18 years) patients diagnosed with drug-sensitive susceptible TB of any form and initiated treatment between 1st of January 2019 — 31st of December 2019. The Bucharest Marius Nasta Institute, the Iasi Lung Hospital in Romania, and Chernivtsi TB Centre in Ukraine participated in this study. The study was approved by the ethics committee of each centre (Iassi: 5483/2021, Bucharest: 10592/2019, Chernivtsi: 234/2021,). The need for written informed consent was waived due to the retrospective nature of this study. 
Results and discussion. It is important to study the factors that influence the course and effectiveness of TB treatment, as they can be useful for the development of new methods of diagnosis and treatment. Our retrospective study identified such factors in an Eastern European population. The risk of adverse consequences increases for the elderly, people without a permanent place of residence, patients with already diagnosed chronic kidney disease, the presence of cavities on a chest X-ray, rapid relapse of TB, under­weight or obesity.These factors may help tailor care to specific populations and may lead to improved TB scoring systems to identify patients at risk of treatment failure. 
Conclusions. Our study presented common risk factors for unfavourable outcomes with previous research, including age, sex, nutritional status, lifestyle, comorbidities, TB-related parameters, but introduced a new, paraclinical parameter, and highlighted differences for East Europe.