Literature Highlights is a digest of notable papers recently published in the leading respiratory journals, allowing our readers to stay up-to-date with research advances. Coverage in this issue includes time to smear and culture conversion during TB treatment; probability of diagnosing ventilator-associated pneumonia in intensive care and use of antimicrobials; optimising computer-aided chest X-ray to diagnose intra-thoracic TB in children; and clinical standards for asthma in low- and middle-income countries.