An epidemiological investigation was conducted among 926 smear positive pulmonary TB patients, who were newly registered from January 2012 to December 2013 in the 5 districts (Huangdao, Pingdu, Jimo, Jiaonan and Jiaozhou) of Qingdao City. The sputum culture and drug susceptibility testing (DST) by using proportion method were performed to all recruited patients. Finally, a total of 490 patients were culture positive and had completely baseline information; among them, the strains from 337 patients were performed DST while the DST was failed to be done to the strains from 153 patients due to contaminations. We divided the patients into two category groups: initiated treatment patient group and re-treatment patient group, the analysis were done in the two patient groups. SPSS 20.0 was used for statistical analysis. The basic information analysis was conducted by using the prescription method. The count data were analyzed by using χ ² test or Fisher exact test, and the level of the test was α=0.05.

The overall drug resistant TB rate in the 5 districts was 19.88% (67/337), the overall mono-drug resistant TB rate was 11.87% (40/337), the overall poly-drug resistant TB rate was 2.97% (10/337), and the overall multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB rate was 5.04% (17/337). The poly-drug resistant rates in the initiated treatment patient group (2.19%, 7/319) and retreatment patient group (16.67%, 3/18) were significantly different (Fisher exact test, P=0.012); the MDR rates in the initiated treatment patient group (4.08%, 13/319) and the re-treatment patient group (22.22%, 4/18) had statistically significant difference (Fisher exact test, P=0.009). In this study, the DST results of 337 strains showed the drug-resistant rates to the first-line anti-TB drugs as follows which ranked from high to low: H resistant rate (12.17%, 41/337), R resistant rate (9.20%, 31/337), S resistant rate (5.64%, 19/337) and E resistant rate (2.37%, 8/337). Among 67 TB patients with drug resistance, there were 11 drug resistance spectrums with a high proportion of H resistance (22.39%), R resistance (19.40%) and H+R resistance (19.40%); in the initiated treatment patient group, the higher drug resistant rate was to H (21.67%, 13/60), R (20.00%, 12/60), H+R (20.00%, 12/60), and in the re-treatment patient group, the higher drug resistant rate was to H (28.57%, 2/7). 19.40% (13/67) of patients was with rifampicin resistant, and the proportion of patients with MDR-TB was 25.37% (17/67).

The TB control program in Qingdao has achieved certain success, but the MDR-TB situation is still a serious problem.