Tuberculosis forecasting and temporal trends by gender and age in a high endemic city of Northeast Brazil: Are we achieving the disease elimination stage?

Abstract Objective : to describe the temporal trend of tuberculosis cases according to gender and age group and to make forecasts in an endemic municipality of northeast Brazil. Method : This was a Time Series study, carried out in a municipality in the northeast of Brazil. Population was composed of tuberculosis cases among residents of the municipality, reported between the years 2002 and 2018. An exploratory analysis of the monthly rates of tuberculosis detection, smoothed according to gender and age group, was performed. Subsequently, the progression of the trend and predictions of the disease were also characterized according to these aspects. For the trends forecast, the seasonal autoregressive linear integrated moving average – Seasonal ARIMA model and the usual Box-Jenkins method were used to choose the most appropriate models. Results : A total of 1,620 cases of tuberculosis were reported, with an incidence of 49.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in men and 34.0 per 100,000 in women. Regarding the incidence for both genders, there was a decreasing trend, which was similar for age. Evidence resulting from the application of the time series shows a decreasing trend between the years 2002–2018, however, it is unlikely that there will be a significant fall in the disease before 2022.