ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Antimicrobials, Resistance and Chemotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1609146
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancements in Diversity and Drug Resistance Mechanisms in Mycobacterial DiseasesView all 10 articles
Epidemiology of drug-resistant tuberculosis among hospitalized childr en with tuber culosis in Southwest China, 2017-2024
Provisionally accepted
- 1Public Health and Clinical Center of Chengdu, Chengdu, China
- 2Chengdu Women and Children’s Central Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: To describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of pediatric tuberculosis (TB) inpatients diagnosed with resistance to any anti-tuberculosis drug (drug-resistant tuberculosis [DR-TB]) in southwest China. Methods: Patients aged ≤ 14 years with clinically diagnosed pediatric TB were recruited from January 2017 to December 2024 at specialty hospitals in southwest China based on either etiology or clinical confirmation. Hospitalization records were extracted for each patient.Results: Among 2,208 pediatric TB patients, 90 (4.08%) had DR-TB. DR-TB cases had an average age of 10.94 ± 3.52 years, with a male-to-female ratio of 0.76:1. The highest proportion was in the 10-14-year age group (72.2%), and prevalence was significantly higher in girls than boys. By disease type, 13.33% had pulmonary tuberculosis, 5.56% had extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB), and 81.11% had combined TB. The most common form of EPTB was lymph node TB (30.00%), followed by pleural TB (20.71%), abdominal TB (19.29%), and TB meningitis (14.29%). Among the 90 pediatric DR-TB cases, 74.4% were primary patients (with rifampicin-resistant TB and multidrug-resistant TB accounting for 36.7% and 30.0%, respectively). The Tibetan ethnic group had the highest proportion of DR-TB cases (63.3%). Over the 8-year period, most pediatric DR-TB cases were from western Sichuan (including Ganzi, Aba, and Liangshan minority areas), with the highest number in the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.Pediatric DR-TB in southwest China predominantly affects older girls, with primary cases representing a high proportion. The western regions of Sichuan bear a relatively high burden.Public health efforts should prioritize awareness, screening, and early diagnosis of pediatric DR-TB in high-risk areas to prevent transmission.
Keywords: pediatric, Drug-resistant tuberculosis, Epidemiology, Clinical Characteristics, southwest China
Received: 10 Apr 2025; Accepted: 17 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, An, Yang and Liao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yi Liao, Chengdu Women and Children’s Central Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.