Shedding Light on Tuberculosis Deaths in Children and Adolescents.

* Abbreviations: ART — : antiretroviral therapy CFR — : case fatality ratio SMR — : standardized mortality ratio TB — : tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) kills ∼1.5 million people worldwide each year.1 Among children and adolescents infected with TB, those <5 years old and those with HIV coinfection have a higher risk of death.2–4 Not only have few researchers quantified the impact of antiretroviral therapy (ART) regarding those with coinfected with HIV,4–6 there are important gaps in our overall knowledge for adolescents treated for TB. Numerous observational studies conducted before the availability of anti-TB antibiotics revealed that TB disease and death peaked in the first 2 years of life and then decreased until adolescence, after which it rose steeply.7 Some reports revealed sex-based differences in incidence and mortality during adolescence.8–11 In recent decades, however, adolescents have received little attention in TB research, and their vulnerability to the disease has been largely forgotten, mostly because TB surveillance systems group individuals <15 years with children and those ≥15 years with adults.1,12 Disaggregated TB data have not been reported routinely for adolescents, although this practice will change in 2021 after the World Health Organization’s request for countries … Address correspondence to Silvia S. Chiang, MD, Center for International Health Research at Rhode Island Hospital, 55 Claverick St, Suite 101, Providence, RI 02906. E-mail: silvia_chiang{at}brown.edu