World Tuberculosis Day 2021 – Project aims to tackle child mortality

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24th of March is World Tuberculosis Day. Every year, more than one million children fall ill with tuberculosis (TB) globally, and about a quarter of them die from the potentially preventable and curable disease. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tuberculosis is one of the ten most frequent causes of death among children under five years of age. The main obstacle remains the correct and timely identification of the disease, especially in resource-constrained settings. New tests are required, that would work with samples that can be easily obtained from children. Led by Dr. Norbert Heinrich at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine of the LMU University Hospital Munich, an international consortium of researchers is therefore carrying out the RaPaed-AIDA-TB Project (Rapid and Accurate Diagnosis of Paediatric TB - An AIDA (Assessment of Innovative Diagnostic and Algorithms for Early and Sensitive Detection of Acute TB)).

RaPaed is one of the largest cohorts and diagnostic studies evaluating a range of new diagnostics ever in childhood TB, is funded by the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF). The core of the project is a large diagnostic validation study, which is carried out together with local partners in five countries, including four sites in Africa (South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi), and one in India. Eight new diagnostic test candidates are evaluated on all children in the study, and their performance compared to the reference standard used in child diagnostic validation studies. In total, 10 diagnostics/diagnostic approaches being studied in RaPaed.

Read more about the study on the website of the LMU University Hospital Munich