Impact of malnutrition and associated factors on rifampicin/multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment outcomes among patients treated in alert and St. Peter's Specialized Hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: a retrospective follow-up study.

Objective: This study was aimed to assess the impact of malnutrition and associated factors on rifampicin/multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment outcomes among patients treated in Alert and St. Peter's Specialized Hospitals, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Results: Our study included 344 RR/MDR-TB patients, of which 43.3% were undernourished. The overall unsuccessful treatment outcome was 22.1% (95% CI 0.18, 0.27). Patients with undernutrition were over eight times more likely to develop unsuccessful treatment outcomes [AOR = 8.32 (95% CI 4.48, 15.46)] compared to normal/ overweight individuals. After we computed the binary logistic regression analysis separately for patients with undernutrition and normal/ overweight nutritional status, age, residence, occupation, chest x-ray, anemia, co-morbidities, cigarette smoking, and alcohol drinking were significantly associated with unsuccessful treatment outcomes among undernourished patients, while age, HIV, and smoking were significantly associated with unsuccessful treatment outcomes among patients with normal/overweight individuals.

Conclusions: In this study, undernutrition had a remarkable impact on unsuccessful treatment outcomes. Therefore, further researches need to be conducted to integrate the management of undernutrition with the DR-TB treatment program.