Routine Xpert MTB/XDR for Tuberculosis Drug-Resistance Surveillance in Northern Morocco: A Four-Year Programmatic Analysis

Routine Xpert MTB/XDR testing in northern Morocco detected molecular rifampicin resistance in 75 of 188 interpretable episodes (39.9%) and enabled multiclass resistance profiling.

• Why it matters: Drug-resistance surveillance needs rapid diagnostics that go beyond rifampicin and produce actionable resistance information for routine public-health monitoring.
• What they did: In a regional tuberculosis diagnostic network, 258 Xpert MTB/XDR testing episodes (Apr 2022–Jul 2026) were retrospectively analyzed, linking Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra results with target-level molecular outputs.
• The result: Among 186 episodes with interpretable rifampicin plus additional resistance results, 40.3% had resistance to at least one additional drug class, and 71.7% of 92 fully profiled resistant episodes showed resistance to two or more drug classes.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.