Journal article
Tuberculosis in Australia's tropical north: a population-based genomic epidemiological study
Ella M Meumann, Kristy Horan, Anna P Ralph, Belinda Farmer, Maria Globan, Elizabeth Stephenson, Tracy Popple, Rowena Boyd, Mirjam Kaestli, Torsten Seemann, Koen Vandelannoote, Christopher Lowbridge, Robert W Baird, Timothy P Stinear, Deborah A Williamson, Bart J Currie, Vicki L Krause
LANCET REGIONAL HEALTH-WESTERN PACIFIC | ELSEVIER | Published : 2021
Abstract
Background: The Northern Territory (NT) has the highest tuberculosis (TB) rate of all Australian jurisdictions. We combined TB public health surveillance data with genomic sequencing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates in the tropical 'Top End' of the NT to investigate trends in TB incidence and transmission. Methods: This retrospective observational study included all 741 culture-confirmed cases of TB in the Top End over three decades from 1989-2020. All 497 available M. tuberculosis isolates were sequenced. We used contact tracing data to define a threshold pairwise SNP distance for hierarchical single linkage clustering, and examined putative transmission clusters in the context of epi..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
Awarded by NHMRC postgraduate scholarship
Awarded by NHMRC
Awarded by NHMRC fellowship
Funding Acknowledgements
This research was funded under the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant number 1131932 (The HOT NORTH initiative), a NHMRC postgraduate scholarship to Ella Meumann (1114696), NHMRC investigator grants to Deborah Williamson (GNT1174555) and Timothy Stinear (GNT1194325), and a NHMRC fellowship to Anna Ralph (1142011). The funding source had no role in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the paper for publication