Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health challenge. Children, adolescents and young mothers are high-risk populations for TB with unique challenges and needs. Children are often misdiagnosed or diagnosed too late, resulting in long-term sequelae or mortality, whilst adolescents, despite having more recognisable adult-type TB and being an important source of community transmission, can be difficult to engage in care as they often fall between paediatric and adult models of care. TB during pregnancy poses significant risks to the mother-infant pair, yet antenatal screening to ensure timely treatment initiation is often inadequate. Recent research advancements to address these challenges include more accessible TB management aids, shorter effective drug regimens, child-friendly drug formulations, strategies for active case finding to expand treatment coverage including of asymptomatic disease and more options for preventive therapy. These advances have informed global policy and guidelines; however, major gaps in translation from policy to practice remain. This narrative review discusses the progress and identifies potential solutions with insights from the Asia-Pacific region to ongoing challenges in TB detection, treatment, and prevention in children and young people, with a view to TB elimination.
- 9926719396001891
- Emerging evidence to reduce the burden of tuberculosis in children and young people
- Julie HuynhYara-Natalie AboRina TriasihVarinder SinghGordon PukaiPauline MastaBazarragchaa TsogtBoi Khanh LuuFelisia FelisiaNaomi PankAung AungAlison MortonPete AzzopardiRaspati C KoesoemadinataBachti AlisjahbanaPhilip C HillBen J MaraisSilvia S ChiangStephen M Graham
- International journal of infectious diseases, Vol.155(155), 107869
- Centre for International Health
- Elsevier
- 04/03/2025
- Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This work was first published in International Society of Infectious Diseases (Elsevier). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed to the creator(s) and the source, is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way, and a link to the Creative Commons license is provided.
- English
- Journal article