Extensive Transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from a Child

• Published in: The New England journal of medicine Vol. 341; no. 20; pp. 1491 - 1495
• Main Authors: Curtis, Amy B, Ridzon, Renée, Vogel, Ruth, McDonough, Stephen, Hargreaves, James, Ferry, Julie, Valway, Sarah, Onorato, Ida M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston, MA Massachusetts Medical Society 11.11.1999
• Subjects: Adult; Antitubercular Agents - therapeutic use; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Children & youth; Contact Tracing; disease transmission; Emigration and Immigration; Family Characteristics; Female; General aspects; Humans; infectious diseases; Isoniazid - therapeutic use; Male; Medical sciences; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Mycobacterium tuberculosis - isolation & purification; North Dakota - epidemiology; Pediatrics; Schools; Tuberculin Test; Tuberculosis; Tuberculosis, Pulmonary - diagnosis; Tuberculosis, Pulmonary - epidemiology; Tuberculosis, Pulmonary - prevention & control; Tuberculosis, Pulmonary - transmission; USA, North Dakota; North Dakota
• ISSN: 0028-4793; 1533-4406
• DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199911113412002

Young children rarely transmit tuberculosis. 1 , 2 In five recently published reports of school-based outbreaks, all source patients were adults or adolescents. 3 – 7 Tuberculosis in young children is rarely infectious, because young children are less likely than adults to have a productive cough, to generate the force needed to aerosolize organisms into droplet nuclei, or to have cavitary lesions on chest radiography. 1 , 2 In July 1998, infectious tuberculosis was identified in a nine-year-old child residing in North Dakota. The child was screened because extrapulmonary tuberculosis had been diagnosed in his female guardian. Bilateral cavitary tuberculosis was diagnosed in the child. Because . . .