Background: Multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a public healthissue in Pakistan. The objective of this study was to describe the demographicsof rifampicin resistant TB patients in the largest TB associated tertiary caresetting in Karachi, Pakistan, which can later be used for active case finding andtargeted diagnostic approaches.Methods: A Cross sectional data based study was performed on the demographics of patients labelled as rifampicin resistant using Genexpert® from the period of January 2014 to June 2015 at the Provincial TB reference Laboratory, Dow University of Health Sciences. The records of the patients diagnosed as rifampicin resistant by Genexpert® were tabulated using Microsoft Excel® with anonymization and analyzed using online statistical software.Results: Among the 252 patients labeled as rifampicin resistant usingGenexpert®, 133(52.7%) were males, while 119 (47.22%) were females. Themean age for males at diagnosis (32.824 years) was slightly higher than that for females (29.45 years). Mann-Whitney U test, showed that the distribution ofage was significantly different in the two groups (p < 0.05). After stratification,several differences were observed among different age groups and a higherproportion of rifampicin resistance in the females of the young age groups wasobserved. Male patients tended to have a higher age at the time of diagnosis within a group, except in the oldest group of patients.Conclusions: Few demographic differences exist in rifampicin resistantpatients, which can be used for targeting specific population for active casefinding and MDRdiagnosis.
