Trends and challenges in tuberculosis in a medium-sized southern European setting

Abstract

Trends in tuberculosis (TB) admissions over 40 years at the Infectious Diseases Clinic of Perugia University Hospital, Perugia, Italy, show that in the last decade non-Italian TB case admissions outweighed those of Italians, with a large number of cases from Eastern Europe (25.2%) and Africa (23.4%). Non-Italians tended to be younger and were generally new pulmonary TB cases, and drug resistance was also more common. Overall, the number of multidrug-resistant cases increased. Only one case occurred in a native-born Italian, and five of seven cases had newly diagnosed TB. In low TB incidence settings such as Perugia, Italy, TB prevention and control programmes for the foreign-born need to be reinforced.