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The article presents the review of publications devoted to personalized tuberculosis chemotherapy in children and adolescents with consideration of the specific course of the disease with the relevance to age. It is possible to reduce the duration of chemotherapy and the number of anti-tuberculosis drugs within the regimen. At the same time, the major criteria include results of microbiological tests of diagnostic specimens of the patient’s and/or index case and drug susceptibility tests in full both by express and traditional microbiological methods, microbiological and radiological monitoring, primarily in the intensive phase of chemotherapy. Generally, this personalized approach can assure high treatment efficacy.

The objective of the study : to assess the efficacy of patient-oriented chemotherapy of local tuberculous lesions in children exposed to multiple/extensive drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR/XDR TB) based on the results of the immediate and postponed follow-up, and to define the criteria of chemotherapy efficacy in such cases. Subjects and methods : 39 children (3-12 years old) with tuberculosis of chest lymph nodes or focal pulmonary tuberculosis. Patients were randomly divided into two groups treated with different chemotherapy regimens: Group 1 (20 persons) – 5 drugs for the intensive phase / 4 drugs for the continuation phase; Group 2 (19 patients) – 4 drugs for the intensive phase / 3 drugs for the continuation phase. The regimen consisted of the drugs, to which the index case was susceptible. Chemotherapy efficacy was assessed based on the immediate (the ones observed during chemotherapy) and postponed follow-up results (in 1 and 2 years upon treatment completion). The duration of the intensive phase and total duration of treatment were the same in both groups: Group 1 – 3.5 ± 0.5 and 10.5 ± 0.5 months respectively; Group 2 – 3.1 ± 0.6 and 10.0 ± 0.6 months respectively. Results . The efficacy of patient-oriented chemotherapy was confirmed in both groups by results of immediate follow-up and absence of relapses in 1 and 2 years upon chemotherapy completion. Conclusions . The supposed chemotherapy regimens can be used in children with local tuberculous lesions exposed to MDR/XDR tuberculosis as an alternative to standard regimens.