Journal article
The role of super-spreading events in Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission: Evidence from contact tracing
YA Melsew, M Gambhir, AC Cheng, ES McBryde, JT Denholm, EL Tay, JM Trauer
BMC Infectious Diseases | Published : 2019
Abstract
Background: In current epidemiology of tuberculosis (TB), heterogeneity in infectiousness among TB patients is a challenge, which is not well studied. We aimed to quantify this heterogeneity and the presence of "super-spreading" events that can assist in designing optimal public health interventions. Methods: TB epidemiologic investigation data notified between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2015 from Victoria, Australia were used to quantify TB patients' heterogeneity in infectiousness and super-spreading events. We fitted a negative binomial offspring distribution (NBD) for the number of secondary infections and secondary active TB disease each TB patient produced. The dispersion parameter..
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Funding Acknowledgements
Y. A. Melsew is a recipient of a Monash Graduate Scholarship for his PhD study. J. M. Trauer is a recipient of an Early Career Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council. No specific funding was received for this study.