Trend analysis and longitudinal clustering of tuberculosis mortality in Asian and North African countries: Results from the global burden of disease 2017 study

Tuberculosis (TB) is still a serious health problem with a remarkable global burden. In this study, we aimed to assess the trend of TB mortality in Asian and North African countries in the period 1990-2017 and provide a new classification according to TB mortality trend.

TB mortality rates from 1990 to 2017 were extracted from the Global Burden of Disease website for 55 Asian and North African countries. Trend analysis of TB mortality rates for males, females, and the total population was performed using the marginal modeling approach. Moreover, the latent growth mixture modeling (LGMM) framework was applied to classify these 55 countries based on their trend of TB mortality rate 

In the period between 1990 and 2017, South Asia and High Income Asia-Pacific regions had the highest and lowest death rates due to TB, respectively. The marginal modeling results showed that the Asian and North African countries had experienced a downward trend with an intercept of 28.79 (95%CI: 19.64, 37.94) and a slope (mean annual reduction) of -0.67 (95%CI: -0.91, -0.43)  per 100,000 the study period. Finally, the LGMM analysis classified these 55 countries into four distinct classes.

In general, our findings revealed that although the countries in Asia and North Africa super region experienced a descending TB mortality trend in the past decades, the slope of this reduction is quite small. Also, our new classification may be better suited for combating TB through future healthcare planning in lieu of the commonly used geographic classifications.