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Background: There is no gold standard for tuberculosis diagnosis in children. Clinical Case Definitions for Classification of Intrathoracic Tuberculosis in Children were proposed by international experts in 2012 and updated in 2015. We aimed to compare the 2012 and 2015 Clinical Case Definitions in HIV-infected children with suspected tuberculosis., Methods: We enrolled HIV-infected children with suspected tuberculosis in Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, and Vietnam (ANRS [Agence Nationale de Recherches sur le SIDA et les hépatites virales] 12229 PAANTHER [Pediatric Asian African Network for Tuberculosis and HIV Research] 01 Study). We classified children using the 2012 and 2015 Case Definitions considering as tuberculosis cases those with confirmed tuberculosis and those with probable and unconfirmed tuberculosis in the 2012 and the 2015 classifications, respectively. We assessed agreement between both classifications., Results: Of 438 children enrolled, 197 (45.0%) children were classified as tuberculosis (45 confirmed, 152 probable) using the 2012 Case Definition and 251 (57.3%) were classified as tuberculosis (55 confirmed, 196 unconfirmed) using the 2015 classification. Inter-classification agreement for tuberculosis diagnosis was 364/438, 83.1%, with a kappa statistic of 0.667 (95% confidence interval 0.598-0.736). Of 152 children with probable tuberculosis (2012), 142 (93.4%) were considered as tuberculosis by the 2015 version and 10 (6.6%) as unlikely tuberculosis including 9 with spontaneous clinical improvement. Of 132 possible tuberculosis (2012), 58 (43.9%) were reclassified as tuberculosis (2015)., Conclusions: Agreement between the 2 versions of the Case Definition was substantial but more children were considered as tuberculosis using the 2015 version. Spontaneous symptom resolution reinforces both confidence in the "unlikely" category as being children without tuberculosis and the importance of the clinician's treatment decision in the study., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

SETTING: The largest cities in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Central African Republic. OBJECTIVE: To demonstrate the feasibility and document the effectiveness of household contact investigation and preventive therapy in resource-limited settings. DESIGN: Children under 5 years living at home with adults with bacteriologically confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) were screened using questionnaire, clinical examination, tuberculin skin test and chest X-ray. Children free of active TB were offered preventive treatment with a 3-month rifampicin-isoniazid (3RH) or 6-month isoniazid (6H) regimen in Benin. Children were followed-up monthly during treatment, then quarterly over 1 year. Costs of transportation, phone contacts and chest X-rays were covered. RESULTS: A total of 1965 children were enrolled, of whom 56 (2.8%) had prevalent TB at inclusion. Among the 1909 children free of TB, 1745 (91%) started preventive therapy, 1642 (94%) of whom completed treatment. Mild adverse reactions, mostly gastrointestinal, were reported in 2% of children. One case of incident TB, possibly due to a late TB infection, was reported after completing the 3RH regimen. CONCLUSION: Contact investigation and preventive therapy were successfully implemented in these resource-limited urban settings in programmatic conditions with few additional resources. The 3RH regimen is a valuable alternative to 6H for preventing TB .

Objective: To evaluate inter-reader agreement and diagnostic accuracy of chest radiography (CXR) in the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) in children with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection., Design: HIV-infected children with clinically suspected TB were enrolled in a prospective study conducted in Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon and Viet Nam from April 2010 to December 2014. Three readers-a local radiologist, a paediatric pulmonologist and a paediatric radiologist-independently reviewed the CXRs. Inter-reader agreement was then assessed using the κ coefficient. Diagnostic accuracy of CXR was assessed in culture-confirmed cases and controls., Results: A total of 403 children (median age 7.3 years, interquartile range 3.5-9.7; 49.6% males) were enrolled. Inter-reader agreement was as follows: between local radiologist and paediatric pulmonologist, κ = 0.36 (95%CI 0.27-0.45); local radiologist and paediatric radiologist, κ = 0.16 (95%CI 0.08-0.24); and paediatric pulmonologist and paediatric radiologist, κ = 0.30 (95%CI 0.21-0.40). Among 51 cases and 151 controls, after a consensus, CXR had a sensitivity of 71.4% (95%CI 58.8-84.1) and a specificity of 50.0% (95%CI 41.9-58.1). Alveolar opacities and enlarged lymph nodes on CXR had limited specificity for TB (64.7% and 70.2%, respectively). Miliary and/or nodular opacities patterns on CXR were more specific to TB (specificity 94.3%)., Conclusion: CXR showed poor-to-fair inter-reader agreement and limited diagnostic accuracy for TB in HIV-infected children, likely due to comorbidities. Radiological criteria for this specific population require further investigation.