Tuberculosis in Australia's tropical north: a population-based genomic epidemiological study.

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 epidemiologic information.

Findings

There were 359 (48%) cases born o

SUBMITTER: Meumann EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8350059 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature