Introduction:

Most of the tuberculosis cases in countries with low prevalence of it are due to a reactivation of the latent tuberculosis infection.

Objective:

To examine the incidence of the latent tuberculosis infection in children of groups vulnerable to tuberculosis.

Methods:

It was conducted a descriptive, cross-sectional and prospective study in 85 asymptomatic children under 19 years, 68 of them from some groups vulnerable to tuberculosis that were attended in Centro Habana Pediatric Hospital and in the Oncology and Radiobiology Institute; and a control group of 17 healthy adolescents from the Nursing School of “Calixto García” Faculty, in the period April-June, 2016. All patients underwent a physical examination, nutritional assessment, thoracic radiology and tuberculin test.

Results:

From the 85 patients studied, 41 suffered chronic diseases: 12 diabetics, 11 had collagen disease, 9 had chronic renal disease and other 9 have oncologic diseases. All patients had an evolution of more than one year and were receiving immunosuppressive medication (except from the diabetics). From the other 44 patients, 27 had close or frequent contact with a tuberculosis patient. There was predominance of children ≥ 10 (64; 75,3 %) of the female sex (49; 57,6 %). All of them were vaccinated with BCG and had normal thoracic radiographies. It was detected latent tuberculosis infection in 6 patients (7,0 %); all of them had had contact with a tuberculosis sufferer.

Conclusions:

There is low incidence of latent tuberculosis infection in the studied vulnerable groups. Children having contact with tuberculosis sufferers are the only affected, which can be related with the low rate of tuberculosis in Cuba and the fast control actions.