Demographic characteristics of patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis in Germany

¹ Public Health Center, Wiesbaden, Germany; and German Central Committee against Tuberculosis, Berlin, Germany
² Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
³ German Central Committee against Tuberculosis, Berlin, Germany
⁴ International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Paris, France

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: TBRieder{at}tbrieder.org.

	Abstract

Germany, 1996–2000.

To determine demographics of patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis in Germany

Analysis of data on 26,302 tuberculosis cases from a national survey.

The crude proportion of patients with extrapulmonary manifestations among tuberculosis patients was 21.6%. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis was most likely among females, children below the age of 15 years, and among persons originating from Africa and Asia. Females tended to be more likely to have any form of extrapulmonary tuberculosis than males except pleural tuberculosis. The strength of this association was strongest in the age band 25 to 65 and less pronounced amongst the oldest patients. Children were particularly prone to develop lymphatic and meningeal tuberculosis, while the likelihood for genitourinary tuberculosis increased with increasing age. Asian and African patients were generally more likely than persons from other areas to have lymphatic, osteoarticular, meningeal, and miliary tuberculosis.

This analysis shows important differences by age, sex, and origin in the likelihood that a tuberculosis patient presents with extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Since the relative contribution of the foreign-born to tuberculosis in low-prevalence countries is rising, extrapulmonary tuberculosis must be taken into account more often in the differential diagnostic work-up of these patients, particularly among those originating from Asia and Africa.