TB incidence in US higher among older adults but declining rapidly within birth cohorts

Tuberculosis incidence among people aged 50 years or older in the United States is high but declining rapidly within subsequent birth cohorts, according to a study in Clinical Infectious Diseases. As an example, the researchers noted that “the average 50-year-old in 2001 could expect their annual TB risk to decline by 77% by the time that person turned 68 in 2019.” “Although we found strong evidence that the annual percentage decline was shallower for older individuals, annual reductions in TB risk were still over 4% in the oldest age group in our sample,” Sun Kim, MS, a doctoral student in population health sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and colleagues wrote. “Most TB cases in the United States result from reactivation of a latent TB infection (LTBI), with incidence highest in the older population,” Kim told Healio. “While observational cohort studies have shown that the risks of LTBI reactivation...