Photo Credit: Henadzi Pechan
The following is a summary of “A systemic review of the utility of antituberculosis therapy for presumed tuberculous uveitis,” published in the January 2025 issue of Infectious Disease by Taylor et al.
Uveitis is suspected to be caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, an uncommon but potentially sight-threatening condition, and the challenges in diagnosis and low incidence of tuberculosis uveitis (TBU) hinder the establishment of evidence-based management strategies.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to analyze the existing research and summarize the literature on the utility of TB therapy for managing TBU.
They searched Medline, Embase, and Central databases without date restrictions to identify studies on the effect of antituberculosis therapy in individuals with uveitis and evidence of TB exposure. The search on Medline and Embase was performed using the Ovid interface with the following strategies: 1) Tuberculosis, Ocular/, 2) exp Tuberculosis/ and exp Uveitis/, and 3) ((uveitis or panuveitis or (serpiginous adj3 choroidit*)) and (tubercul* or TB)).mp or using “1 or 2 or 3”.
The results showed that 55 studies were included, but the methodological differences among them prevented meta-analysis, leading to a narrative analysis. A risk of bias analysis was performed using the Newcastle–Ottawa scale.
Investigators concluded that systemic biases and a lack of control for confounding variables in the available evidence highlighted the need for more data on the utility of TB therapy for TBU.
Source: bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-024-10288-1#Abs1
