Abstract: Objective  To understand the epidemic status and characteristics of tuberculosis (TB) in Minhang district, Shanghai, to build the observed cohort and provide scientific basis for the development and validation of the early warning model of TB.  Methods  According to the requirement of the project “Study on the early warning models of tuberculosis”, one of the 11th five-year major projects for infectious disease. Xinzhuang town was selec-ted. Prospective epidemiological method was used to investigate the residents selected through cluster sampling. 121 898 residents were selected as research subject to analyze their epidemic characteristics of people with suspicious TB symptoms and TB patients. Chi-square test was used to analyze the prevalence rates of different groups and 0.05 was set as the criteria of statistical significance.  Results  120 637 residents were investigated (61 055 males and 59 582 females), and the survey rate was 98.97% (120 637/121 898). 551 TB suspects, including 194 people with at least one suspicious symptom and 357 people with a history of TB, and 16 TB cases were detected. After further examination, 1 TB suspect was diagnosed as TB. The prevalence rate of TB in Xinzhuang town was 14.09/100 000 (17/120 637). The proportion of smear positive cases was 11/17, and that of new smear positive cases was 6/17. The majority of patients were male 13/17 and the prevalence in male was 21.29/100 000 (13/61 055), which was significantly higher than that in female (6.71/100 000, 4/59 582) (χ²=4.549, P=0.049). The highest prevalence rate appeared in the 55-65 age group (38.68/100 000, 8/20 681) and the prevalence rate of people aged 55 years and above was 29.64/100 000 (11/37 113), which was greater than that aged under 55 years (7.18/100 000, 6/83 524), and there was significant difference between 2 groups (χ²=9.196, P=0.004).  Conclusion  Baseline survey indicated that, the epidemic situation of TB is relatively mild in Minhang district compared with other districts. The majority of patients are male and the higher prevalence rate appears in elderly.

Key words: Tuberculosis, pulmonary/epidemiology, Prevalence, Epidemiologic studies, Sex factors, Age factors, Shanghai city