A new study claims that around the world, at least 32,000 children are affected with a "superbug" strain of tuberculosis (TB) each year.
This estimate was the first to quantify the exact amount of children suffering from the "difficult-to-treat" strain of TB. The study is also the first to come up with a clear picture of how TB affects children and how the multi-drug resistant strain of TB (MDR-TB) infects different age groups.
The study discovered that worldwide, one million children suffer from TB annually, which is twice as the number previously estimated. Out of these one million cases, only one third are formally diagnosed with TB.
"A huge proportion (of children) are suffering and dying from TB unnecessarily," Helen Jenkins of Brigham and Women's Hospital's Division of Global Health Equity, the lead statistician on the research told Reuters.
To gather data for their study, Jenkins' team analyzed public databases and developed a technique to determine possible underreporting of TB cases in children. Jenkins explained that they discovered that previous estimates claim that kids suffering from TB were about 500,000; however, taking into account the underreporting, this number should be one million.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in 2012, 8.6 million people have TB and 1.3 million died because of it.The WHO also stated that 500,000 people are affected with MDR-TB in 2012 and by 2015 that number could increase up to 2 million.
The researchers stated that monitoring how TB affects children is vital for two reasons. First, children who are affected with drug-sensitive strains of TB respond better to treatment and since TB grows quickly in younger people, a child suffering from TB might offer clues on how TB spreads within a community.
"That's telling you you've got some kind of system failure going on there," Jenkins told Reuters.
She stated that their study could be improved by using better data collection techniques and a more systematic way of analyzing the data.
This study was published in the Mar. 24 issue of the Lancet, in commemoration of Word TB Day.
