Incidence of tuberculosis among children living in contact with smear-positive tuberculosis: Advantages and limits of the Quantiferon TB gold in tube test.

Objective/background: Children living in contact with smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) patients are highly exposed to TB infection. Our objective was to estimate the incidence of TB in children living in contact with a Smear Positive (M+) pulmonary tuberculosis (PTM+) index case during 2years following exposure.

Methods: This was a descriptive, cohort, prospective, multicenter study of children aged from 6months to 15years in contact with a PTM+ case.

The difficulties of childhood tuberculosis diagnosis.

Aims And Objectives: The WHO estimate that 8.8millions new cases of tuberculosis occurred in 2010, (between 8.5 and 9.

Genetic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains isolated in Algeria: Results of spoligotyping.

Objective/background: Molecular typing tools, including spoligotyping, are currently widely used in the monitoring and study of the dynamics of tuberculosis epidemics.

Methods: A study of the molecular profile of a sample of 129 Myobacterium tuberculosis strains isolated during 2011 was carried out in the National Reference Laboratory for Tuberculosis and Mycobacteria at the Pasteur Institute of Algeria. This sample was selected at random from a set of 350 strains isolated from tuberculosis patients from central and eastern areas of the country.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis genotype Beijing: About 15 strains and their part in MDR-TB outbreaks in Algeria.

Within the framework of epidemiological surveillance by molecular typing tools conducted in the NRL on multi-resistant strains, the application of spoligotyping on a group of 390 strains consisting of 389 DR-MTB strains and 1 susceptible strain isolated from patients made it possible to detect the presence of 15 strains belonging to the Beijing genotype. All 15 strains were genotyped by MTBDRplus. Among the 15 strains, 11 were typed by RFLP and 9 by MIRU-VNTR.