Tuberculosis in Children Hospitalized in a Low-burden Country: Description and Risk Factors of Severe Disease

Background In high-income countries, few pediatric studies have described the clinical expression of tuberculosis (TB) according to age, and their results are discordant. Patients Methods All children ( Results We included 304 patients with a median age of 9.9 years (interquartile range 3.3-13.3) and a male to female ratio of 1.04. Overall, 280/304 (92%) were classified: 168/304 (55%) were classified as showing severe TB and 112/304 (37%) as showing non-severe TB. Central nervous system disease was more frequent among patients Conclusions This description of the clinical spectrum of pediatric TB in a low-burden setting demonstrates that adolescents are the group most at risk of experiencing severe TB.