Comparing risk factors for primary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and primary drug-susceptible tuberculosis in Jiangsu province, China: a matched-pairs case-control study.

To find out the reason why some people get infected directly with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), whereas some get infected with drug-susceptible tuberculosis (DS-TB), a 1:1:1 matched-pairs case-control study was conducted to identify predictors associated with primary MDR-TB and primary DS-TB against the control in Jiangsu Province, China. All three groups were geographically matched (by neighborhood) and matched on sex and age (±5 years). In total, 110 participants were enrolled in each of three matched groups. Conditional logistic regression analysis showed that predictors independently associated with primary MDR-TB were illiteracy or primary school education, annual per capita income ≤ US$2,000, per capita living space < 40 m(2), and interval ≥ 7 days of eating fruits; predictors with primary DS-TB were body mass index ≤ 20 and feeling higher life pressure. This indicates that there are different predictors impacting the transmission range of primary MDR-TB and primary DS-TB in the general population.