CONGENITAL TUBERCULOSIS: A CASE REPORT

Abstract

This article reports on a case of tuberculosis vertical transmission in a pregnant woman co-infected by the HIV-1 and the Mycobacterium tuberculosis, who did not adhere to the treatment of any of the two pathologies during prenatal care. The tuberculosis (TB) is an illness that killed many patients as far as the early decades of the 20th century, but which had its incidence significantly decreased after the coming of antituberculosis drugs. With the current epidemic of the HIV, certain opportunist pathology had resurged, among which there is the TB. Congenital tuberculosis is a rare form of disease; however, it is potentially fatal. The multiplicity of its clinic requires a high degree of suspicion for the diagnosis. It is for obstetricians to consider TB in symptomatic, immunocompromised women, or who had contact with individual with infectious TB. And it is for pediatricians to consider the congenital or perinatal forms of TB in the differential diagnosis of children with poor response to conventional therapy, especially when the mother has risk factors for infection with M. tuberculosis.