Trial reportPloS one2014
Importance of cough and M. tuberculosis strain type as risks for increased transmission within households.
Trial report in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevention of tuberculosis in household members: estimates of children eligible for treatment.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2019Pooled it
- Sulfolipid-1 fromJournal of neurophysiology · 2026Article
- Predictors of culture status in patients with persistent smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis at two months of treatment.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Article
- Assessing Infectiousness and the Impact of Effective Treatment to Guide Isolation Recommendations for People With Pulmonary Tuberculosis.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2025Review
- Clinical profiles and related factors in tuberculosis patients with positive sputum smear mycobacterium tuberculosis tests.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Evidence for Tuberculosis in Individuals With Xpert Ultra "Trace" Sputum During Screening of High-Burden Communities.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2024Article
- Exploring the link between cardiovascular risk factors and manifestations in latent tuberculosis infection: a comprehensive literature review.The Egyptian heart journal : (EHJ) : official bulletin of the Egyptian Society of Cardiology · 2023Review
- Early alveolar macrophage response and IL-1R-dependent T cell priming determine transmissibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Lipid droplets and the transcriptome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from direct sputa: a literature review.Lipids in health and disease · 2021Review
- Using Cure Models to Estimate the Serial Interval of Tuberculosis With Limited Follow-up.American journal of epidemiology · 2020Article
- Cross-validation of existing signatures and derivation of a novel 29-gene transcriptomic signature predictive of progression to TB in a Brazilian cohort of household contacts of pulmonary TB.Tuberculosis (Edinburgh, Scotland) · 2020Observational
- Advances in the understanding of Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission in HIV-endemic settings.The Lancet. Infectious diseases · 2019Review
- Transmission phenotype of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains is mechanistically linked to induction of distinct pulmonary pathology.PLoS pathogens · 2019Article
- Article
- Humanized Mouse Model Mimicking Pathology of Human Tuberculosis forFrontiers in immunology · 2019Article
- Sex and age differences in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in Brazil.Epidemiology and infection · 2018Article
- Cough-aerosol cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the prediction of outcomes after exposure. A household contact study in Brazil.PloS one · 2018Article
- Intensity of exposure to pulmonary tuberculosis determines risk of tuberculosis infection and disease.The European respiratory journal · 2018Article
- Tuberculosis Infectiousness and Host Susceptibility.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleThe degree to which tuberculosis (TB) is transmitted between persons is variable. Identifying the factors that contribute to transmission could provide new opportunities for TB control. Transmission is influenced by host, bacterial and environmental factors. However, distinguishing their individual effects is problematic because measures of disease severity are tightly correlated, and assessing the virulence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates is complicated by epidemiological and clinical confounders.
objectivesTo overcome these problems, we investigated factors potentially associated with TB transmission within households.
methodsWe evaluated patients with smear-positive (≥2+), pulmonary TB and classified M. tuberculosis strains into single nucleotide polymorphism genetic cluster groups (SCG). We recorded index case, household contact, and environmental characteristics and tested contacts with tuberculin skin test (TST) and interferon-gamma release assay. Households were classified as high (≥70% of contacts with TST≥10 mm) and low (≤40%) transmission. We used logistic regression to determine independent predictors.
resultFrom March 2008 to June 2012, we screened 293 TB patients to enroll 124 index cases and their 731 contacts. There were 23 low and 73 high transmission households. Index case factors associated with high transmission were severity of cough as measured by a visual analog cough scale (VACS) and the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ), and cavitation on chest radiograph. SCG 3b strains tended to be more prevalent in low (27.3%) than in high (12.5%) transmission households (p = 0.11). In adjusted models, only VACS (p<0.001) remained significant. SCG was associated with bilateral disease on chest radiograph (p = 0.002) and marginally associated with LCQ sores (p = 0.058), with group 3b patients having weaker cough.
conclusionsWe found differential transmission among otherwise clinically similar patients with advanced TB disease. We propose that distinct strains may cause differing patterns of cough strength and cavitation in the host leading to diverging infectiousness. Larger studies are needed to verify this hypothesis.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.