Bone and joint tuberculosis in children in the Blackburn area since 2006: a case series

This report describes a series of four cases of children between the ages 5 and 14 years with bone or joint infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis diagnosed between June 2006 and March 2008 in the Blackburn area of England. All of the cases were of South Asian descent. The diagnosis was confirmed by the presence of M. tuberculosis on the culture of bone, synovium or joint fluid, or by the presence of the typical histology of tuberculosis (TB). The sites of tuberculous disease were the hip joint, the sacro-iliac joint and the talus. A recent paper by Sandher et al. (J Bone Joint Surg Br 89: 1379-1381, 2007) illustrated only two cases of childhood bone and joint TB in the same geographical area in the preceding 17 years.