J. Aznar et al., NOSOCOMIAL TRANSMISSION OF TUBERCULOSIS INFECTION IN PEDIATRICS WARDS, The Pediatric infectious disease journal, 14(1), 1995, pp. 44-48
Analysis of restriction fragment length polymorphisms is a well establ
ished method of ''DNA fingerprinting'' that has been used to trace the
transmission of particular strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis duri
ng investigations of outbreaks. This report describe the use of restri
ction fragment length polymorphisms and arbitrarily primed polymerase
chain reaction analysis to investigate two outbreaks of tuberculosis t
hat affected six children who attended two pediatric wards in our hosp
ital. In both outbreaks a history of household exposure to an adult wi
th M. tuberculosis was obtained and suspected tuberculous contacts wer
e identified. We have demonstrated unequivocally the strain relationsh
ip among the isolates in all the cases by restriction fragment length
polymorphisms and arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction analysi
s. These techniques are very useful for performing epidemiologic studi
es of tuberculosis in children where natural history of tuberculosis i
nfection is different from that in adults in that it is almost always
primary infection rather than reactivation.