Tuberculosis of children in China:status of diagnosis and treatment and its facing challenges

According to the latest WHO report, at least 1 million children worldwide suffered from tuberculosis every year, causing 253 thousand deaths.Tuberculosis in children is a serious public health problem.The diagnosis of pediatric tuberculosis is complicated by nonspecific symptoms and the paucibacillary nature of the disease.Rates of progression from latent infection to active disease are higher with severe symptoms in children than in adults.Bacillus Calmette Guerin is still the only vaccine used to prevent tuberculosis, but it has limitation.Drug-resistant TB among children is still a major cause of childhood illness and death.The treatment of MDR-TB in children is guided by the same principles and uses the same second-line drugs as in the treatment of adults, however, the effectiveness and safety of shorter MDR-TB treatment regimens are still unknown.With the innovation of gene sequencing technology and advances in biomedical analysis technology, precision medicine in big data era will lead to a new trend of the prevention and treatment of pediatric tuberculosis.