A child in UCL's SHINE trial sits on his mother's lap while his chest is examined by a doctor
A child in UCL's SHINE trial sits on his mother's lap while his chest is examined by a doctor - A UCL-led international trial exploring the effectiveness of tuberculosis (TB) treatment in children has led to a change in the World Health Organisation's global guidelines for managing the disease. The research, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that the treatment duration for the majority of children with drug sensitive tuberculosis can be shortened from six to four months, thereby reducing the burden on families and healthcare systems around the world. Principal Investigator, Professor Diana Gibb (MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL) said: "It is estimated that nearly one quarter of children with TB die, but the vast majority (90%) die because they are not diagnosed and started on treatment. A shorter treatment for children with non-severe TB allows savings of on average $17 (£12) per child, which can be used to improve the screening coverage and find the missing children with TB." Researchers from the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL worked with partners in South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and India on the SHINE study, the first randomised control trial to assess whether children with 'minimal' TB could be effectively treated with a shorter course of treatment. Minimal tuberculosis is non-severe lung or lymph gland TB, where the TB bacteria cannot easily be found in the sputum through smear microscopy (smear negative). In 2020 an estimated 1.1 million children fell ill with TB globally, and unlike adult patients, most of them (approximately two thirds) had a non-severe form of the disease.
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