Youming Mei, Wenyue Zhang, Ying Shi, Haiqin Jiang, Zhiming Chen, Santosh Chokkakula, Siyu Long, Chun Pan, Hongsheng Wang
DOI: 10.2340/00015555-3283

To identify the microorganism distribution clinical characteristics and management of cutaneous Mycobacterium tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacterial infectious diseases in the past 10 years we collected and analyzed the patient records of all cutaneous M. tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacterial infection cases diagnosed by culture and/or PCR from 2008 to 2017 in the Hospital of Dermatology Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Among 203 cases including 89 M. tuberculosis infections and 114 nontuberculous mycobacterial infections M. tuberculosis was the most common species in all patients and M. marinum predominated among the nontuberculous mycobacterial followed by M. abscessus. Cases of cutaneous mycobacterial infection especially nontuberculous mycobacterial infection increased in the past 10 years and infection with rapidly growing mycobacteria significantly increased in the last 5 years in this national hospital in Southeast China. Injuries were common causative factors. Approximately 91.3% of patients responded well to longstanding antibiotic therapy.

Cutaneous tuberculosis or nontuberculous mycobacteria infections are frequently underdiagnosed. Although the high burden of tuberculosis and increasing incidence of nontuberculous mycobacteria infections have been recently reported cutaneous infection caused by tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacteria occur rarely and remain unnecessarily reported in most regions of the world. This group of diseases shares many similarities on their histopathology such as granulomatous reaction pattern and their nonspecific clinical presentations. However the severity treatment and prognosis may vary among species and patients. We focused on cutaneous tuberculosis and nontuberculous mycobacteria infections determined their prevalence species distribution and clinical characteristics in the same period and presented a view of these diseases in Southeast China.