ReviewThe international journal of tuberculosis and lung disease : the official journal of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease2018
Droplets, dust and guinea pigs: an historical review of tuberculosis transmission research, 1878-1940.
Review in The international journal of tuberculosis and lung disease : the official journal of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 41 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Article
- Single-cell profiling reveals that dynamic lung immune responses distinguish protection from susceptibility to tuberculosis.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- Article
- Airflow Determines Natural Airborne Transmission of Tuberculosis in a Guinea Pig Model.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Detection of AerosolizedOpen forum infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Characterization of PPE19 as a novel mediator ofmSphere · 2025Article
- Tuberculosis and Impact of COVID-19 on Spread of Epidemics in Kazakhstan.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Candidate transmission survival genome ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Whispers in the Wind: Face Mask Sampling for Mycobacterium tuberculosis Detection in Children With Pulmonary Tuberculosis.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2024Article
- Immune correlates of protection as a game changer in tuberculosis vaccine development.NPJ vaccines · 2024Review
- Mycobacterium tuberculosis cough aerosol culture status associates with host characteristics and inflammatory profiles.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Antigen identification strategies and preclinical evaluation models for advancing tuberculosis vaccine development.NPJ vaccines · 2024Review
- Tuberculosis Infectiousness is Associated with Distinct Clinical and Inflammatory Profiles.Research square · 2024Article
- TBscreen: A passive cough classifier for tuberculosis screening with a controlled dataset.Science advances · 2024Article
- From pathogenesis to antigens: the key to shaping the future of TB vaccines.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Review
- A broader evaluation of vaccine-induced T cell immunity against tuberculosis.Frontiers in tuberculosis · 2024Article
- Multi-target Compounds against Trypanosomatid Parasites andCurrent drug targets · 2024Review
- Assessing vaccine-mediated protection in an ultra-low dose Mycobacterium tuberculosis murine model.PLoS pathogens · 2023Article
- Key advances in vaccine development for tuberculosis-success and challenges.NPJ vaccines · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issuedERRATA.2018
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The transmission of tuberculosis (TB) occurs mainly via inhalation of airborne droplet nuclei; however, the precise details of this process remain uncertain. We reviewed the literature from 1870 to 1940, when Mycobacterium tuberculosis was discovered and the concept of transmission emerged as a hallmark of the infectious disease. By 1940, laboratory experiments, animal studies and clinical observation had demonstrated that cough was central to TB transmission, and that guinea pigs close to patients with cough could be infected, mainly by patients coughing small droplets likely containing only 1-2 bacilli. A minority of pulmonary TB patients, usually during the early stages of the disease, with thin watery sputum, more successfully coughed small infectious droplets than patients with heavily smear-positive tenacious sputum who were often too ill and too weak to cough vigorously. There was ongoing debate regarding the possible importance of desiccated sputum particles found in surface dust. Investigation of TB transmission has a history of more than 130 years.
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