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. 1996 Jan;275(4):305-7.

Transmission of tuberculosis among the urban homeless

P F Barnes  1 , H el-Hajj, S Preston-Martin, M D Cave, B E Jones, M Otaya, J Pogoda, K D Eisenach
Affiliations
  • PMID: 8544271

Transmission of tuberculosis among the urban homeless

P F Barnes et al. JAMA. 1996 Jan.

Abstract

Objective: To determine the relative frequencies of primary and reactivation tuberculosis in the urban homeless.

Design: Prospective evaluation of homeless tuberculosis patients.

Setting: Central Los Angeles, Calif.

Patients: Thirty-four homeless patients with culture-proven tuberculosis.

Interventions: IS6110-based restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis was performed on Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates. If results were inconclusive, pTBN12-based RFLP analysis was performed.

Main outcome measure: Clustering of M tuberculosis isolates. A cluster consisted of two or more isolates with indistinguishable RFLP patterns.

Results: Twenty-four of 34 homeless patients had clustered isolates in six clusters.

Conclusions: The minimum percentage of cases due to primary tuberculosis in the homeless was estimated to be 53%, compared with the traditional estimate of 10% in the general population. The results suggest that primary tuberculosis caused the majority of tuberculosis cases in this population of the urban homeless in central Los Angeles.

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