Geographical and demographic profile of tuberculosis in a pediatric population in Mumbai – A retrospective cross-sectional hospital-based study

Aim Pediatric tuberculosis (TB) is endemic in Mumbai, India. However, geographical distribution and demographic pattern of children affected with TB are not known. This study aims to determine a geographical and demographic profile of children with TB. Methods This is a cross-sectional study that included children from 0–15 years of age suffering from TB, who were referred to our Pediatric TB Clinic, and were seeking treatment at the clinic located in central Mumbai from 2010 to 2011. The patients were diagnosed with tuberculosis based either clinically (fever with cough for more than 2 weeks/loss of weight or failure to thrive/recent contact with an adult having tuberculosis), bacteriologically (positive AFB culture), or histopathology suggestive of caseous granulomas. Records of all the patients were reviewed and the age, gender, type of tuberculosis, drug-resistant (DR) TB, community of patient, and the region of residence were recorded. The association of age, gender, type of tuberculosis, and drug resistance with area of residence as well as type of community was analyzed. Results A total of 242 children were included in the study. Mean age of presentation was 5 ± 3.8 years. Male:female ratio was 1.1:1. Totally, 230 (95%) patients were from Mumbai whereas 10 (4.1%) patients were residing outside Mumbai. We were unable to record the residence of 2 patients. Of the 230 patients from Mumbai, 63 patients (26%) were from the Central Mumbai, 93 patients (38.4%) were from Central suburbs, 18 (7.4%) were from the South Mumbai and 57 (23.6%) were from Western suburbs of Mumbai. The association between the area of residence and type of tuberculosis (pulmonary TB, p = 0.1349; abdominal TB, p = 0.063; bone TB, p = 0.871; latent TB, p = 0.0783; disseminated TB, p = 0.9; adenopathy, p = 0.6576; neuro TB, p = 0.2564; serositis, p = 0.170), gender (p = 0.7139), drug resistance (p = 0.5182), and age (p = 0.2403) was not statistically significant. Overall, 195 (80.6%) patients were Hindus and the remaining 47 (19.4%) patients were Muslims. Similarly, the association between the community (Hindu and Muslim) and type of tuberculosis (pulmonary TB, p = 0.7518; abdominal TB, p = 0.2146; bone TB, p = 1.0; latent TB, p = 0.2217; disseminated TB, p = 1.0; adenopathy, p = 0.3403; neuro TB, p = 0.8157; serositis, p = 1.0), gender (p = 0.2121), drug resistance (p = 0.3625), and age (p = 0.8721) was also not statistically significant. Conclusion TB at our center was predominantly seen in children from Central Mumbai, which may be due to the central location of our hospital. However, types of TB, DR-TB, were seen equally in children from all parts of the city and were not located to any specific region.