Transmission of tuberculosis among the urban homeless

Article Abstract:

As many as half to three-quarters of all homeless people who have tuberculosis may have the primary form of the disease and not the reactivated form. Primary tuberculosis is the initial infection and reactivated tuberculosis is reactivation of a previous infection. Researchers used the restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) technique to determine the similarity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates among 34 homeless people. RFLP showed that 10 of the isolates were identical, and the remaining 24 had clusters of identical fragments. This indicates that from 53% to 71% of the infections were primary. This is much higher than the estimated 10% incidence of primary tuberculosis in the general population. The frequency of primary tuberculosis was no higher in HIV-infected people than in non-infected people. These results indicate that more resources should be spent on identifying and treating recently-infected homeless people.

Diseases

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Patterns of tuberculosis transmission in Central Los Angeles

Article Abstract:

Asking tuberculosis patients where they spend much of their time may be a better way of tracking transmission patterns than asking them about personal contacts. This was the conclusion of a study of 162 tuberculosis patients who were asked about contacts and tested for identical or closely related bacterial strains. Eight clusters of 96 patients infected with similar strains were identified in this way, but only two patients identified others in the cluster as personal contacts. However, many of the patients had spent time in three specific homeless shelters as well as other locations.

Health aspects, Housing, Homeless shelters

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Molecular epidemiology of tuberculosis

Article Abstract:

The use of genotyping to identify different strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is reviewed. Topics include genotyping methods, genotyping for clinical management, the transmission of tuberculosis, genotyping in tuberculosis control programs, genotyping and the pathogenesis of tuberculosis, drug resistance and disease transmission, and the frequency of reinfection.

Genetic aspects, Mycobacterium tuberculosis

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