{"title":"Community Voices and Whole-Genome Sequencing for Tuberculosis: Storytelling and the Importance of Listening.","authors":"Justin T Denholm, Diego S Silva","doi":"10.1159/000537727","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>One of the primary public health functions of a tuberculosis (TB) program is to arrest the spread of infection. Traditionally, TB programs have relied on epidemiological information, gathered through contact tracing, to infer that transmission has occurred between people. The ability of drawing such inferences is extensively context dependent. Where epidemiological information has been strong, such as 2 cases of TB occurring sequentially within a single household, confidence in such inferences is high; conversely, public health authorities have been less certain about the significance of TB cases merely occurring in the same wider social group or geographic area. Many current laboratory tests for TB used globally may be sufficient to confirm a diagnosis and guide appropriate therapy but still be insufficiently precise for distinguishing two strains reliably. In short, drawing inferences regarding a chain of transmissions has always been as much art as science.</p>","PeriodicalId":49650,"journal":{"name":"Public Health Genomics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Public Health Genomics","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1159/000537727","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/3/20 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"GENETICS & HEREDITY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
One of the primary public health functions of a tuberculosis (TB) program is to arrest the spread of infection. Traditionally, TB programs have relied on epidemiological information, gathered through contact tracing, to infer that transmission has occurred between people. The ability of drawing such inferences is extensively context dependent. Where epidemiological information has been strong, such as 2 cases of TB occurring sequentially within a single household, confidence in such inferences is high; conversely, public health authorities have been less certain about the significance of TB cases merely occurring in the same wider social group or geographic area. Many current laboratory tests for TB used globally may be sufficient to confirm a diagnosis and guide appropriate therapy but still be insufficiently precise for distinguishing two strains reliably. In short, drawing inferences regarding a chain of transmissions has always been as much art as science.
期刊介绍：
''Public Health Genomics'' is the leading international journal focusing on the timely translation of genome-based knowledge and technologies into public health, health policies, and healthcare as a whole. This peer-reviewed journal is a bimonthly forum featuring original papers, reviews, short communications, and policy statements. It is supplemented by topic-specific issues providing a comprehensive, holistic and ''all-inclusive'' picture of the chosen subject. Multidisciplinary in scope, it combines theoretical and empirical work from a range of disciplines, notably public health, molecular and medical sciences, the humanities and social sciences. In so doing, it also takes into account rapid scientific advances from fields such as systems biology, microbiomics, epigenomics or information and communication technologies as well as the hight potential of ''big data'' for public health.
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