[An outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis in the dormitory of construction labors suspected to have been due to exogenous reinfection].
We report an outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in a dormitory of construction labors, and this outbreak is suspected to have been caused by exogenous reinfection, based on the restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis and other findings. After a patient entered our hospital with active TB, 12 new other patients were discovered by contacts examination. These patients lived together in the same dormitory. They were all male and single, and were aged from 43 to 63 years old. Except one patient (No. 3) previously treated for TB for three months about 2 years ago and was suspected to be the index case of this outbreak, 12 other patients did not have a medical history of TB. The bacilli cultured from 11 patients (No. 1-11) were tested by RFLP analysis, three patterns were identified, and the fingerprints from 9 patients (No. 1-9) were identical, and the patterns of incomplete resistance of some antituberculous drugs were quite similar between No. 1-9 and No. 12 and between No. 10 and No. 13, respectively. The locations of the main lesions of TB on chest X-ray pictures were the apico-posterior segments of bilateral upper lobes. No signs suspected to indicate primary tuberculosis were detected. Considering the rate of tuberculous infection in Japan among the middle age and above as well as the identical RFLP results, most of patients in this outbreak except the index case No. 3 were suspected to have TB due to the exogenous reinfection.
Kurasawa
T
T
Division of Respiratory Medicine, National Minami-Kyoto Hospital, Japan.
Sato
A
A
Nakatani
K
K
Ikeda
T
T
Yoshimatsu
H
H
Ikeda
N
N
Inoue
T
T
Kanai
K
K
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious; D005160:Facility Design and Construction; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000302:isolation & purification; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D011638:Public Housing; D012008:Recurrence; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000382:microbiology / Q000635:transmission