BACKGROUND: Isoniazid-induced pancreatitis is a potentially serious adverse drug reaction, however, the frequency of its occurrence is unknown. We conducted a systematic review to explore this adverse drug reaction comprehensively.
METHODS: We performed an advanced search in PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Ovid, and Embase for studies that reported isoniazid-induced pancreatitis. From the extracted data of eligible cases, we performed a descriptive analysis and a methodological risk of bias assessment using a standardized tool.
RESULTS: We included 16 case reports from eight countries comprising 16 patients in our systematic review. Most of the isoniazid-induced pancreatitis cases were extrapulmonary tuberculosis cases. We found the mean age across all case reports was 36.7 years. In all the cases, discontinuation of isoniazid resulted in the resolution of pancreatitis.
CONCLUSIONS: We found the latency period for isoniazid-induced pancreatitis to be ranged from 12 to 45 days after initiation of isoniazid therapy. A low threshold for screening of pancreatitis by measuring pancreatic enzymes in patients on isoniazid presenting with acute abdominal pain is recommended. This would facilitate an early diagnosis and discontinuation of isoniazid, thus reducing the severity of pancreatitis and preventing the complications of pancreatitis.

Eales\' Disease is an idiopathic peripheral retinal vasculopathy first described by British ophthalmologist Henry Eales in 1880. Most prevalent in healthy young males, Eales\' Disease often presents with symptoms of sudden blurry or decreased vision and floaters. Although no clear, standardized stage of the disease exists, it progresses through three overlapping phases-peripheral periphlebitis, ischemic capillary ischemia, and retinal neovascularization. The etiology of Eales\' Disease is unknown and appears to be multifactorial, but post-TB hypersensitivity to tuberculoprotein and M. tuberculosis DNA is the most potential cause in the etiology of Eales\' Disease. With a thorough examination of the clinical presentation and diagnosis of Eales\' Disease-incorporating the latest clinical findings related to the condition-the investigation for Eales\' Disease extends to explore recent potential connections with other ocular conditions or possible cofactors, such as glaucoma, uncontrolled diabetes, drug abuse, or inherited medical conditions. Moreover, focusing on critical insights into the treatment of Eales\' Disease across its various stages of progression, the overarching goal of the paper is to refine and suggest possible future diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Widening our understanding of pathophysiology and utilizing various treatment options for individual patients holds immense potential for advancing ocular medicine and optimizing patient care for people with this disease with unknown pathophysiology.

BACKGROUND: Finding individuals with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) is important to control the pandemic and improve patient clinical outcomes. To our knowledge, systematic reviews assessing the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, acceptability, and feasibility of different DR-TB case-finding strategies to inform research, policy, and practice, have not been conducted and the scope of primary research is unknown.
OBJECTIVE: We therefore assessed the available literature on DR-TB case-finding strategies.
METHODS: We looked at systematic reviews, trials, qualitative studies, diagnostic test accuracy studies, and other primary research that sought to improve DR-TB case detection specifically. We excluded studies that included patients seeking care for tuberculosis (TB) symptoms, patients already diagnosed with TB, or were laboratory-based. We searched the academic databases of MEDLINE, Embase, The Cochrane Library, Africa-Wide Information, CINAHL (Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Epistemonikos, and PROSPERO (The International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews) using no language or date restrictions. We screened titles, abstracts, and full-text articles in duplicate. Data extraction and analyses were carried out in Excel (Microsoft Corp).
RESULTS: We screened 3646 titles and abstracts and 236 full-text articles. We identified 6 systematic reviews and 61 primary studies. Five reviews described the yield of contact investigation and focused on household contacts, airline contacts, comparison between drug-susceptible tuberculosis and DR-TB contacts, and concordance of DR-TB profiles between index cases and contacts. One review compared universal versus selective drug resistance testing. Primary studies described (1) 34 contact investigations, (2) 17 outbreak investigations, (3) 3 airline contact investigations, (4) 5 epidemiological analyses, (5) 1 public-private partnership program, and (6) an e-registry program. Primary studies were all descriptive and included cross-sectional and retrospective reviews of program data. No trials were identified. Data extraction from contact investigations was difficult due to incomplete reporting of relevant information.
CONCLUSIONS: Existing descriptive reviews can be updated, but there is a dearth of knowledge on the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, acceptability, and feasibility of DR-TB case-finding strategies to inform policy and practice. There is also a need for standardization of terminology, design, and reporting of DR-TB case-finding studies.

Advances in pediatric TB care are promising, the result of decades of advocacy, operational and clinical trials research, and political will by national and local TB programs in high-burden countries. However, implementation challenges remain in linking policy to practice and scaling up innovations for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of TB in children, especially in resource-limited settings. There is both need and opportunity to strengthen clinician confidence in making a TB diagnosis and managing the various manifestations of TB in children, which can facilitate the translation of evidence to action and expand access to new tools and strategies to address TB in this population. This review aims to summarize existing guidance and best practices for clinicians and health care providers in low-resource, TB-endemic settings and identify resources with more detailed and actionable information for decision-making along the clinical cascade to prevent, find, and cure TB in children.

BACKGROUND: Undernutrition increases the risk of TB infection to be active TB, death and relapse of the disease. Undernutrition also disturbs the management process of tuberculosis. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate the pooled magnitude and determinants of undernutrition among TB patients in Ethiopia.
METHODS: From August 20, 2022 to January 6, 2023, the research articles were identified via the search engines Google Scholar, Medline, Pub Med, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. Stata version 14 was used for analysis, along with a standardized data extraction checklist. The Cochrane Q test statistic and I2 statistics were used to determine heterogeneity. A random-effect model was used to assess the extent of undernutrition among TB patients. OR with a 95% CI was used to report the relationship between undernutrition and independent factors. A funnel plot and Egger\'s test were used to examine publication bias.
RESULTS: A total of 720 research articles were identified via several databases and 21 studies were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis. The pooled magnitude of undernutrition among TB patients was 48.23% (95% CI 42.84, 53.62). The current meta-analysis revealed that patients who had no formal education (OR = 2.11(95%CI: 1.09, 4.06), average monthly income < 1800 ETB (OR = 2.32 (95CI: 1.33, 4.04), unable to work (OR = 2.61(95CI:1.99, 3.43), patients who had eating disorder (OR = 2.73 (95CI: 2.09, 3.56), patients who had intestinal parasite (OR = 3.77 (95CI: 2.39, 5.94), patients of > 5 family size (OR = 3.79 (95CI: 1.06, 14.93), and patients who drank alcohol (OR = 1.47(95CI: 1.06, 2.05) were significantly associated with undernutrition.
CONCLUSIONS: This meta-analysis examined the high magnitude of undernutrition among TB patients in Ethiopia. Strategic and police-oriented intervention to prevent factors contributing to the problem is mandatory.

Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is a live-attenuated vaccine routinely administered to newborns to prevent severe forms of tuberculosis (TB) in TB-endemic countries. Disseminated BCG vaccine disease is a classic feature of children with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or primary immunodeficiency disorders (PIDs) and is associated with high mortality. We report a case of a 6-month-old infant with disseminated BCG disease and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis mimicking juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia with no demonstrable features of HIV or PID even after extensive laboratory work-up and succumbed to progressive disease. Disseminated BCG disease is a rare and potentially fatal complication of BCG vaccine, and prompt immunological evaluation complemented by initiation of 4-drug antitubercular therapy and definitive treatment with antiretroviral therapy or hematopoietic stem cell transplant is warranted.

Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading infectious cause of mortality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); the high prevalence of TB in this region is due to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-coinfection. Despite the advent of modalities to diagnose TB, undiagnosed TB-related deaths among HIV-infected patients remain significantly high. This systematic review aims at characterizing missed TB cases from postmortem studies. This review informs on the burden of TB missed diagnosis and highlights the need of improving TB case-finding strategies, especially among the high-risk groups and early TB therapy initiation to keeping in with the World Health Organization\'s end TB strategy. We searched PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, and African journals online for studies that looked into missed TB cases following postmortem using the following key terms: postmortem, TB diagnosis, and HIV; we included cross-sectional and cohorts from 1980 in the English language that were carried out in SSA among adults\' population. Authors used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines for reporting, the quality of the included studies was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for observational studies, and STATA 17.0 software was used for analysis. This study was registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews with registration number CRD42024507515. The combined prevalence of postmortem missed TB diagnosis among the 6025 participants was 27.13% (95% confidence interval [CI] =14.52-41.89), with a high level of heterogeneity at 98.65% (P < 0.001). The prevalence varied significantly across the included studies, ranging from 1.21% (95% CI = 0.93-1.59) in the general population to 66.67% (95% CI = 50.98-79.37) in people living with HIV (PLWHIV). This current literature suggests that SSA is a region with a high prevalence of missed TB cases but with significant variations between countries. In addition, this study confirms a high number of missed TB infections within the PLWHIV. These results highlight the immediate need for targeted screening and diagnosis strategies and relevant policies.

Despite efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO), tuberculosis (TB) remains a leading cause of fatalities globally. This study reviews time series and machine learning models for TB incidence prediction, identifies popular algorithms, and highlights the need for further research to improve accuracy and global scope. SCOPUS, PUBMED, IEEE, Web of Science, and PRISMA were used for search and article selection from 2012 to 2023. The results revealed that ARIMA, SARIMA, ETS, GRNN, BPNN, NARNN, NNAR, and RNN are popular time series and ML algorithms adopted for TB incidence rate predictions. The inaccurate TB incidence prediction and limited global scope of prior studies suggest a need for further research. This review serves as a roadmap for the WHO to focus on regions that require more attention for TB prevention and the need for more sophisticated models for TB incidence predictions.

Accurate tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis remains challenging, especially in resource-limited settings. This study aims to assess the diagnostic performance of the QIAreach QuantiFERON-TB (QFT) assay, with a specific focus on comparing its diagnostic performance with the QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus (QFT-Plus). We systematically reviewed relevant individual studies on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science up to January 20, 2024. The focus was on evaluating the diagnostic parameters of the QIAreach QFT assay for TB infection, which included sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and concordance with the QFT-Plus assay. QIAreach QFT demonstrated strong diagnostic performance with a pooled sensitivity of 99% (95% CI 95-100%) and specificity of 94% (95% CI 85-97%). Additionally, it showed a PLR of 15.6 (95% CI 6.5-37.5) and NLR of 0.01 (95% CI 0-0.03). The pooled PPV and NPV were 88% (95% CI 70-98%) and 100% (95% CI 99-100%), respectively. Concordance analysis with QFT-Plus revealed a pooled positive percent agreement of 98% (95% CI 88-100%) and pooled negative percent agreement of 91% (95% CI 81-97%), with a pooled overall percent agreement of 92% (95% CI 83-98). In conclusion, QIAreach QFT has shown promising diagnostic performance, with a strong concordance with QFT-Plus. However, further studies are needed to comprehensively evaluate its diagnostic performance in the context of TB infection.

UNASSIGNED: Tuberculosis is a contagious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The emergence and spread of drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis in both developing and developed countries has made diagnosis, treatment, and control of tuberculosis more difficult. The PCR assay, which is a fast and sensitive technique and an alternative method for detecting multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, is used to determine rifampicin (RIF) resistance. There is no single figure in Ethiopia that represents rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis and that is why this study was conducted to overcome the inconsistency of the results of the previous studies.
UNASSIGNED: Studies were researched from five major electronic databases. Studies which were cross-sectional in design, published, and written in English were included. The data were extracted using Microsoft Excel, and the data were managed and analyzed using Stata™ Version 17.0 statistical software. The Forest plot was used to check the presence of heterogeneity. The publication bias, meta-regression, and subgroup analysis were used to find out the source of heterogeneity. A random effect analysis model was used to pool the prevalence of RR TB from primary studies, and associated factors of RR among TB patients were identified using Meta regression. The presence of association was reported using OR with 95% CI.
UNASSIGNED: The overall pooled prevalence of tuberculosis was 14.9% (95% CI: 13.34, 16.46), of these approximately 7.48% (95% CI: 6.30, 8.66) showed rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis in Ethiopia. Among the computed variables, 2.05% living with HIV1.39 (95%CI: 1.13, 1.72) and having a history of TB treatment (95%CI: 1.34, 3.15) were identified as significant factors associated with RR TB in Ethiopia.
UNASSIGNED: Drug-resistant TB is one of the prevalent emerging infectious diseases among TB patients, which affects approximately one out of every thirteen TB patients. Having TB-HIV coinfection and a history of prior TB treatment were identified as significant factors associated with RR TB. To prevent and control RR TB, patients should complete their follow-up course; the health professionals should educate the actions taken by the patients when they experience drug toxicity and side effects; and the Minister of Health should initiate telemedicine and recruit tracers to overcome TB patients\' default and have good drug adherence and retention after initiation of the treatment.