Key Points
People with confirmed tuberculosis (TB) infectionthat is a positive skin or blood testshould take the preventive treatment, regardless of age, finds a study on Thursday...
Preventive treatment for tuberculosis (TB) can stop latent TB infections (with no symptoms) from developing into deadly diseases later...
Notably, researchers from Boston University in the US found that preventive TB treatment was not effective in most individuals who did not show evidence of infection, except for children under 5...
Among 439,644 participants, the team found that preventive TB treatment was 49 per cent effective among the 2,496 individuals who developed TB, but particularly among individuals with a positive skin or blood test (for which the effectiveness was 80 per cent)...
Despite the fact that individuals with negative blood or skin tests do not seem to benefit from preventive treatments, the researchers say the overall low NNT may justify prioritising this treatment to all exposed contacts in areas where testing for TB infection is inaccessible, the team said..
