[Clinical comparison of male and female patients with pulmonary disease caused by Mycobacterium avium complex (P-MAC)].

OBJECTIVES

The objective of this study was to clarify clinical feature of Pulmonary Mycobacterium avium complex disease (P-MAC).

METHOD

The present study was performed in 120 patients with P-MAC diagnosed during the period from January 2000 to March 2007. We divided P-MAC patients into four groups by the clinical disease type and gender, and retrospectively examined the clinical characteristics.

RESULTS

The subjects were 15 male (NB-M) and 71 female (NB-F) patients with nodular bronchiectatic disease (NB), and 24 male (FC-M) and 10 female (FC-F) patients with fibrocavitary disease (FC). The average age was lowest in the NB-F group (58.0 yrs), and highest in the FC-M group (65.8 yrs). There were 17 patients in the FC-M group and only two patients in the FC-F group with a history of smoking. The average body mass index (BMI) was 16.9, with the lowest value in the FC-F group. In the FC-M group, most of the patients had underlying pulmonary disease, whereas in the FC-F group, only four patients had underlying old pulmonary tuberculosis. The average anterior-posterior dimension was 75.2 mm, being lowest in the FC-F group, and more than 90 mm in the other groups. The proportion of refractory cases was lowest in the NB-M group.

CONCLUSION

We thought that we were able to clarify characteristics of patients with disease caused by MAC by analyzing the types of the disease separately in men and women.