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Recent transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in China: the implication of molecular epidemiology for tuberculosis control

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Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) has remained an ongoing concern in China. The national scale-up of the Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course (DOTS) program has accelerated the fight against TB in China. Nevertheless, many challenges still remain, including the spread of drug-resistant strains, high disease burden in rural areas, and enormous rural-to-urban migrations. Whether incident active TB represents recent transmission or endogenous reactivation has helped to prioritize the strategies for TB control. Evidence from molecular epidemiology studies has delineated the recent transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) strains in many settings. However, the transmission patterns of TB in most areas of China are still not clear. Studies carried out to date could not capture the real burden of recent transmission of the disease in China because of the retrospective study design, incomplete sampling, and use of low-resolution genotyping methods. We reviewed the implementations of molecular epidemiology of TB in China, the estimated disease burden due to recent transmission of M. tuberculosis strains, the primary transmission of drug-resistant TB, and the evaluation of a feasible genotyping method of M. tuberculosis strains in circulation.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Ravi Prakash and Ms. Qi Jiang for critically reading and modifying this manuscript. We want to acknowledge the International Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 20150058 to C.Y.).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology of Ministries of Education and Health, School of Basic Medical Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200032, China

    Chongguang Yang & Qian Gao

  2. Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, School of Public Health, Yale University, 60 College Street, New Haven, CT, 06510, USA

    Chongguang Yang

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Correspondence to Qian Gao.

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Yang, C., Gao, Q. Recent transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in China: the implication of molecular epidemiology for tuberculosis control. Front. Med. 12, 76–83 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-017-0609-5

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