Improving tuberculosis treatment success rate through nutrition supplements and counselling: Findings from a pilot intervention in India

Abstract

In India, the estimated incidence of tuberculosis cases for the year 2018 was 2.69 million. According to WHO, it was responsible for 32 deaths/100,000 population. India also faces a dual burden of tuberculosis and malnutrition which represents an alarming situation. With this backdrop, the current study tries to assess the change in weight and BMI among active TB patients in selected intervention and control site. The study also measures the treatment success rate of the patients. This pilot study was conducted among 282 active TB patients in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh state of Central India and the results were compared with a control site. The intervention included, providing the identified TB patients with monthly nutrition food baskets, nutrition counselling, linking to treatment and promoting its adherence, community mobilization and management and linkages to government schemes. The data for this study was taken from the project Management Information System (MIS).The results indicate that the mean weight for both male and female TB patients increased significantly during each food distribution episode. At the beginning of the intervention the mean weight of the TB patient was 42.9 kg which increased gradually to 49.3 kgs at the end of the intervention. Treatment success rate in the intervention group was recorded as 95% whereas in the control group it was 83.5%.The study strongly confirms that the nutritional supplements and regular counselling can help TB patients gain weight and have greater treatment success rate.

Does nutritional support under programmatic settings result in weight and body mass index changes among tuberculosis patients? Evidence on the impact of nutritional support through Pradhan Mantri Tuberculosis Mukt Bharat Abhiyan under national tuberculosis elimination programme from Ramgarh district of Jharkhand

“…5 A nutritional intervention study conducted in central India by Singh et al found that the mean weight for TB patients increased significantly during each food distribution episode. 7 This corresponds with our study finding of a moderately positive correlation between the number of nutritional kits received and weight-BMI gain. The same study found that the treatment success rate was better among the intervention group as compared to the control group.…”

Nutritionally acquired immunodeficiency must be addressed with the same urgency as HIV to end tuberculosis

“…Although a Cochrane review of randomized trials of nutritional interventions for PWTB did not find evidence of improvement in cure or mortality, quite importantly, the meta-analysis was insufficiently powered [33]. Two non-randomized interventional studies of nutritional interventions in India, with considerably more participants than in all the studies pooled in the Cochrane review, demonstrated significant improvements in treatment success [34,35].…”

Health counseling support medication adherence to regular pulmonary tuberculosis patients

“…The inclusion criteria were 1 : Pulmonary tuberculosis patient population 2 ; Study with intervention design such as RCT, Quasi-experimental and prospective cohort studies 3 ; Studies conducted in the last 10 years; and 4 Title and abstract based on the research question and the results discuss about medication adherence. Next we excluded the studies 1 : pediatric TB patients 2 ; Full text is not available 3 ; duplication of publications; and 4 the study is not in English or Indonesian.Three researchers independently searched and screened article abstracts following the eligibility criteria and search strategy.…”

“…2 In India, the estimated TB cases in 2018 were 2.69 million, and an estimated 32 per 100, 000 population deaths. 3 The research on Riskesdas (the health research report in Indonesia) released in 2018 showed that the number of TB cases was estimated at around 845,000, with a death rate was 35 per 100,000 population. The data also showed that approximately 93,000 people died from TB.…”