Abstract:

Objective: To analyze the tuberculosis (TB) screening results among freshmen of high schools and below in Beijing, and to provide a basis for more scientific and standardized TB screening among new students. Methods: A total of 467088 freshmen with complete screening information records in the “Beijing Freshmen Tuberculosis Screening System” in 2021 were selected as the research objects.The students were from 3804 high schools and below. Basic information, suspected symptoms of TB and history of close contact, TB skin test (TST) results and X-ray chest examination were collected and analyzed. Results: Among the 467088 subjects, 0.17‰ (80/467088) had suspicious symptoms of TB, and 0.40‰ (187/467088) had close contact history of TB. The TST was performed in 69519 subjects with the positive rate of 13.45% (935/69519).The positive rate of TST in boarding middle school was significant lower than that of high school (11.07% (960/8673) vs. 13.77% (8369/60758), χ²=52.927, P<0.001). The positive rate of moderate or above TST was 12.64% (23/182) in subjects with suspected TB symptoms or close contact history, which was significantly higher than that in those who without suspected TB symptoms or close contact history (4.77% (3305/69337), χ²=41.531, P<0.001). Of the 9514 students who finished X-ray chest examination, 7 were pulmonary TB patients. The abnormal rate of chest X-ray of subjects with suspicious symptoms, close contact history, moderately positive TST or above was 5.32% (183/3443), which was significantly higher than that of self-tested subjects (4.05% (246/6071, χ²=8.140, P=0.004). Conclusion: The results of this survey show that the proportion of students with suspected symptoms of pulmonary TB or close contact history increases with the increase of the school period. The 7 subjects of active pulmonary TB found in the screening were all high school students, which conformed to the characteristics of the peak incidence of pulmonary TB among students aged 16-22 years old was, and was basically consistent with the screening results over the years, suggesting that the screening of TB among freshmen should focus on students in high school.

Key words: Tuberculosis, pulmonary, Students, Tuberculin test, Population surveillance