Musculoskeletal tuberculosis: are you ready to diagnose it?

摘要

Tuberculosis (TB) is far from being eradicated from the world (1). Despite the scarcity of this disease in high-income countries, including the Nordic ones, there are 1.7 million deaths (2) and more than 9 million new cases annually in the world (3): this number is higher than at any time in history. In particular, the low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa bear the greatest burden. For example, in South Africa about 1% of the population develops tuberculosis each year, much of it due to HIV (1). Also, the homeless people around the world are at greater risk of being infected with TB. For example, in 2009 there were 9040 cases of tuberculosis in the UK, that is 15 cases per 100,000 individuals. However, the disease is concentrated in certain demographics within certain areas.