Drug-Resistant TB in Children

Why in news?

Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) conducted TB diagnostic tests in collaboration with the Central TB Division under the Revised National TB Control Programme (RNTCP).

What are the highlights of the FIND study?

• Of over 76000 children tested in nine cities 5,500 have TB.
• 9 percentage children have Multi-Drug TB.
• 6 percentage are the proportion of children among new TB patients in 2016.
• MDR TB in children is common in settings where it is common in adults.

What is MDR-TB?

• Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a form of tuberculosis (TB) infection caused by bacteria
• It is resistant to treatment with at least two of the most powerful first-line anti-TB medications (drugs), isoniazid and rifampin.

How MDR-TB diagnosis is done in children?

• Clinical examination
• Tuberculin skin test
• Bactereological confirmation
• HIV testing

What challenges were faced?

• Absence of appropriate samples coupled with decentralised capacity to get good samples from children to test for TB remains a challenge in paediatric TB case detection.
• The paediatric MDR-TB cases had not been documented so far.
• TB diagnosis in children is complicated due to challenges associated with sample collection and poor sensitivity of tests like the Acid fast bacilli (AFB) smear.
• FIND, through this project, has collaborated with the Central TB Division to improve access to more sensitive diagnostic tools like the GeneXpert in the paediatric population.

What is GeneXpert?

• GeneXpert is a diagnostic tool to diagnose TB.
• The test is used with an automated molecular diagnostic platform that enables the diagnosis of TB and some drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) in less than two hours.
• GeneXpert testing was performed free of cost for all presumptive paediatric TB and drug-resistant TB patients (aged under 15 years).

Quick fact

Revised National TB control programme

• Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) is the state-run tuberculosis (TB) control initiative of the Government of India.
• As per the National Strategic Plan 2012–17, the program has a vision of achieving a "TB free India", and aims to achieve Universal Access to TB control services.

Source: The Hindu