[Skeletal tuberculosis--diagnostic challenges].

Background: Skeletal tuberculosis is rare in Norway. The diagnosis could be difficult.

Material: A Somalian mother and three daughters and a Somalian girl in the neighborhood developed skeletal tuberculosis 4-12 months after arrival in Norway.

Results And Interpretation: All had pain as their main complaint. Skeletal scintigraphy and MRI were decisive for demonstration of the infectious locus. Three patients had spondylitis, two of them with serious abscesses. Other localisations were the frontal bone, the humerus shaft, the femoral shaft, and the calcaneus. Despite no signs or symptoms of lung tuberculosis, culture of expectorate or bronchial lavage fluid yielded growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in four patients. This demonstrates the importance of bronchial material also in extrapulmonary tuberculosis.