M. tuberculosis Infection Attributable to Exposure in Social Networks of Tuberculosis Cases in an Urban African Community

Background: The persistence of tuberculosis today and its global disparity send a powerful message that effective tuberculosis control must respond to its regional epidemiology. Active case finding through contact investigation is a standard protocol used for tuberculosis control, but its effectiveness has not been established, especially in endemic areas.

Methods: To quantify the potential effectiveness of contact investigation in Kampala, Uganda, we used a cross-sectional design to evaluate the social networks of 123 tuberculosis index cases and 124 controls without tuberculosis.

Results: Tuberculous infection was present in 515 of 989 tuberculosis case contacts (52.1%) and 396 of 1026 control contacts (38.6%; adjusted prevalence ratio, 1.4; 95% CI, 1.3-1.6). The proportion of infected participants with known exposure within the social network of the tuberculosis case was 35%. The population-attributable fraction was 11.1% for any known exposure, with 7.3% attributable to household exposure and 3.4% attributable to extrahousehold exposure.

Conclusions: This low population-attributable fraction indicates that contact tracing in the social networks of index cases will have only a modest effect in reducing tuberculous infection in a community. New approaches to community-level active case finding are needed.