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Updated: Oct 17, 2025

Demonstrating a Multi-drug Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Amplification Microarray
Published on: April 25, 2014
Challenges in recruiting children to a multidrug-resistant TB prevention trial
S Purchase1, E Batist1, N Mmile2
1Desmond Tutu TB Centre, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Tygerberg.
Insights
Recruiting young children for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) prevention trials is challenging. Key success factors include thorough planning, dedicated teams, and strong collaboration with TB services.
Area of Science:
- Clinical Trials
- Pediatric Infectious Diseases
- Public Health
Background:
- Recruitment for randomized clinical trials is often slow and presents significant challenges.
- Slow patient recruitment can have severe implications for trial outcomes and public health initiatives.
- Enrolling young children into clinical trials, particularly for complex conditions like multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), poses unique difficulties.
Purpose of the Study:
- To summarize and analyze the challenges encountered during the enrollment of young children into a multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) prevention trial in South Africa.
- To identify specific barriers and facilitators for recruiting pediatric participants into the Tuberculosis Child Multidrug-resistant Preventive Therapy Trial (TB-CHAMP).
Main Methods:
- Utilized an electronic recruitment platform to track participant enrollment and generate a recruitment flow diagram for the TB-CHAMP trial.
- Conducted thematic analysis of structured personnel questionnaires, meeting minutes, and workshop notes to identify recruitment barriers and potential solutions.
- Pre-screened adult index cases to assess eligibility for pediatric enrollment in the MDR-TB prevention trial.
Main Results:
- Over 3,682 adult index cases were pre-screened, with a significant proportion having no eligible children under five or having rifampicin-monoresistant tuberculosis.
- More than nine index cases required pre-screening for each child successfully enrolled in the trial, highlighting recruitment inefficiency.
- Identified numerous barriers to recruitment, emphasizing the need for comprehensive planning, dedicated teams, and strong relationships with existing TB services.
Conclusions:
- Recruiting children into multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) prevention trials is a complex and demanding process.
- Lessons learned from the TB-CHAMP trial underscore the importance of meticulous planning, robust data tracking, and effective collaboration for successful pediatric trial recruitment.
- Findings are relevant for ongoing and future MDR-TB prevention trials and other pediatric tuberculosis studies.
Abstract:
BACKGROUND: Recruitment to randomised clinical trials can be challenging and slow recruitment has serious consequences. This study aimed to summarise and reflect on the challenges in enrolling young children to a multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) prevention trial in South Africa.METHODS: Recruitment to the Tuberculosis Child Multidrug-resistant Preventive Therapy Trial (TB-CHAMP) was tracked using an electronic recruiting platform, which was used to generate a recruiting flow diagram. Structured personnel questionnaires, meeting minutes and workshop notes were thematically analysed to elucidate barriers and solutions.RESULT: Of 3,682 (85.3%) adult rifampicin (RIF) resistant index cases with pre-screening outcomes, 1597 (43.4%) reported having no children under 5 years in the household and 562 (15.3%) were RIF-monoresistant. More than nine index cases were pre-screened for each child enrolled. Numerous barriers to recruitment were identified. Thorough recruitment planning, customised tracking data systems, a dedicated recruiting team with strong leadership, adequate resources to recruit across large geographic areas, and excellent relationships with routine TB services emerged as key factors to ensure successful recruitment.CONCLUSION: Recruitment of children into MDR-TB prevention trials can be difficult. Several MDR-TB prevention trials are underway, and lessons learnt from TB-CHAMP will be relevant to these and other TB prevention studies.
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