Volume 9, Number 2, February 2003

Annual Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection Risk and Interpretation of Clustering Statistics

Emilia Vynnycky,* Martien W. Borgdorff,† Dick van Soolingen,‡ and Paul E.M. Fine*
*London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, England; †Royal Netherlands Tuberculosis Association, The Hague, the Netherlands; and ‡National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands

Figure 1. Summary of the main assumptions in the model relating to the risks of developing disease. A) General relationship between the risk of developing the first primary episode (during the first year after infection) and age at infection. An identical relationship is assumed to hold between the risk of exogenous disease and the age at reinfection and between the risk for endogenous disease and the current age of persons. B) Risk of developing the first primary episode (or exogenous disease) in each year following initial infection (or reinfection), relative to that experienced in the first year after infection. The relationship was derived by using data on the interval between tuberculin conversion and disease among persons who were tuberculin negative at intake during the U.K. Medical Research Council BCG trial during the 1950s (13). C) Proportion of respiratory disease incidence manifested as sputum-positive (i.e., infectious). (Pers. comm. K. Styblo, Tuberculosis Surveillance Research Unit, and K. Bjartveit, Norwegian National Health Screening Service).

EID Home | Top of Page | Ahead-of-Print | Past Issues | Suggested Citation | EID Search | Contact Us | Accessibility | Privacy Policy Notice | CDC Home | CDC Search | Health Topics A-Z

This page last reviewed March 20, 2003

Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal
National Center for Infectious Diseases
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention