TB Portals Program in Ukraine

Abstract

TB Portals program (TB-PP), supported and spearheaded by NIAID NIH, coordinates efforts of doctors, researchers, and IT specialists from 13 countries, aimed at collecting and studying patient-centric clinical, radiological and genomics data. Ukraine recently joined TB-PP and we present our first results of comparative analyses and discuss next steps aimed at optimizing TB care and treatment.

The purpose of our study is to illustrate and discuss how Ukraine aligns its efforts in combatting TB with other countries having heavy burden of drug-resistant (DR) DR-TB within the framework of multi-national TB-PP.

Materials and methods: 15 regions of Ukraine take part in the study. The data is entered into the portal through the platform: data.tbportals.niaid.nih.gov. Led by a steering committee of treating physicians, TB Portals collect original clinical, IT, imaging and genomics data, and results of bioinformatics and radiological analysis.

Results: As of today (02/07/2021) 976 cases of TB have been entered: 490 (50.2%) cases of MDR-TB, 189 (19.4%)-XDR-TB, 225 (23.1%)-susceptible TB, 11 (1.1%)-Polyresistant-TB, 61 (6.2%)-Monoresistant-TB were presented. Due to the challenges of long-term treatment of TB, especially of resistant forms, 186 such cases (19.1%) were chosen, and submitted to the TB-PP. According to the results of treatment, we observed: 63 (33.9%) Died, 26 (14%) Cured, 15 (8%) completed, 42 (22.6%) failure, 40 (21.5%) Lost to follow up.

Conclusions: TB Portals now provide de-identified, open-access to individual patient cases and collections of related patient groups in Ukraine, along with data from 13 countries. All patient cases may be instantaneously and interactively retrieved, visualized and analyzed using Data Exploration Portal.