Profiles of tuberculosis disease activation among contacts of patients with tuberculosis

Abstract

The risk of a person progressing to tuberculosis (TB) disease after infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains poorly understood, with some contacts developing TB in the early period following exposure, while others take many years to progress or never do so [1, 2]. We described profiles and patterns of contacts' progression to TB disease following exposure by linking a large, prospectively collected contact investigation dataset from Victoria, Australia to data on subsequent cases of active TB disease, after obtaining ethical approval from the Monash University, Human Research Ethics Committee. Unlike many past studies, this approach offers the opportunity to disaggregate by various ..