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Application of Genotyping to Tuberculosis Prevention and Control
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Guide to the Application of Genotyping to Tuberculosis Prevention
and Control
Applying Genotyping Results to Tuberculosis
Control Practices
This chapter provides guidelines for interpreting and responding
to new genotyping results as they are reported by the genotyping
laboratories. Specifically, we will describe how new information
about genotyping matches can be combined with information about
epidemiologic links between patients with TB in order to identify
chains of recent TB transmission and take appropriate action to
stop transmission (or, in the case of a false-positive culture,
to stop treatment for patients who were falsely diagnosed with TB).
Possible action steps include expanding a contact investigation,
conducting an outbreak investigation, performing a cluster investigation
in order to search for epidemiologic links between patients with
matching genotypes, and determining whether a specific report of
a TB case resulted from a false-positive culture report. Figure
6.1 provides a graphical representation of the steps involved in
the decision analysis of when to take possible action steps. Finally,
we will discuss how genotyping data provide a powerful tool to monitor
trends in TB transmission.
Chapter 5, Developing a TB Genotyping Program, described
the critical components of a TB genotyping program and the key procedures
that need to be established to collect and analyze genotyping and
epidemiologic data. The current chapter will focus on using that
data in a decision analysis in order to identify specific action
steps to take to improve TB control practices.
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