par Dreesman, Alexandra 
Président du jury Casimir, Georges
Promoteur Mascart, Françoise;Velkeniers, Brigitte
Co-Promoteur Allard, Sabine D
Publication Non publié, 2020-09-03
Président du jury Casimir, Georges
Promoteur Mascart, Françoise
;Velkeniers, BrigitteCo-Promoteur Allard, Sabine D
Publication Non publié, 2020-09-03
Thèse de doctorat
| Résumé : | Tuberculosis in the number one infectious cause of death worldwide, but remains underappreciated as a cause of mortality in children and difficult to diagnose. Diagnostic difficulties of TB in children are a consequence of the non-specific clinical presentation, the different spectrum of disease in children and the paucibacillary nature of disease making microbiological confirmation challenging in many cases. Moreover, existing immunodiagnostic tests have important limitations, especially with regard to childhood TB: they lack sensitivity to rule out TB, and are unable to offer discrimination between contained infection and active stages of disease. Their limitations are emphasized in the youngest children that are at greatest risk of developing severe disseminated forms of TB. For that reason we developed, at the Laboratory of Vaccinology and Mucosal Immunity (LoVMI), several non-sputum based tests, that offer excellent diagnostic accuracy compared to commercialy available tests, for all forms of TB in children, in an early stage of infection. This research also provided insight in TB pathogenesis. The main results are summarized in a table (chapter General Discussion) and two algoritms (chapter Conclusions and Perspectives). |
