TY - JOUR
T1 - Tuberculosis Immunoreactivity Surveillance in Malawi (Timasamala) - A protocol for a crosssectional Mycobacterium tuberculosis immunoreactivity survey in Blantyre, Malawi
AU - Rickman, Hannah M.
AU - Phiri, Mphatso D.
AU - Feasey, Helena R.A.
AU - Mbale, Hannah
AU - Nliwasa, Marriott
AU - Semphere, Robina
AU - Chagaluka, George
AU - Fielding, Katherine
AU - Mwandumba, Henry C.
AU - Horton, Katherine C.
AU - Nightingale, Emily S.
AU - Henrion, Marc Y.R.
AU - Mbendera, Kuzani
AU - Mpunga, James A.
AU - Corbett, Elizabeth L.
AU - MacPherson, Peter
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Rickman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2024/5
Y1 - 2024/5
N2 - Tuberculosis (TB) transmission and prevalence are dynamic over time, and heterogeneous within populations. Public health programmes therefore require up-to-date, accurate epidemiological data to appropriately allocate resources, target interventions, and track progress towards End TB goals. Current methods of TB surveillance often rely on case notifications, which are biased by access to healthcare, and TB disease prevalence surveys, which are highly resource-intensive, requiring many tens of thousands of people to be tested to identify high-risk groups or capture trends. Surveys of "latent TB infection", or immunoreactivity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), using tests such as interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) could provide a way to identify TB transmission hotspots, supplementing information from disease notifications, and with greater spatial and temporal resolution than is possible to achieve in disease prevalence surveys. This cross-sectional survey will investigate the prevalence of Mtb immunoreactivity amongst young children, adolescents and adults in Blantyre, Malawi, a high HIV-prevalence city in southern Africa. Through this study we will estimate the annual risk of TB infection (ARTI) in Blantyre and explore individual- and arealevel risk factors for infection, as well as investigating geospatial heterogeneity of Mtb infection (and its determinants), and comparing these to the distribution of TB disease case-notifications. We will also evaluate novel diagnostics for Mtb infection (QIAreach QFT) and sampling methodologies (convenience sampling in healthcare settings and community sampling based on satellite imagery), which may increase the feasibility of measuring Mtb infection at large scale. The overall aim is to provide high-resolution epidemiological data and provide new insights into methodologies which may be used by TB programmes globally.
AB - Tuberculosis (TB) transmission and prevalence are dynamic over time, and heterogeneous within populations. Public health programmes therefore require up-to-date, accurate epidemiological data to appropriately allocate resources, target interventions, and track progress towards End TB goals. Current methods of TB surveillance often rely on case notifications, which are biased by access to healthcare, and TB disease prevalence surveys, which are highly resource-intensive, requiring many tens of thousands of people to be tested to identify high-risk groups or capture trends. Surveys of "latent TB infection", or immunoreactivity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), using tests such as interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) could provide a way to identify TB transmission hotspots, supplementing information from disease notifications, and with greater spatial and temporal resolution than is possible to achieve in disease prevalence surveys. This cross-sectional survey will investigate the prevalence of Mtb immunoreactivity amongst young children, adolescents and adults in Blantyre, Malawi, a high HIV-prevalence city in southern Africa. Through this study we will estimate the annual risk of TB infection (ARTI) in Blantyre and explore individual- and arealevel risk factors for infection, as well as investigating geospatial heterogeneity of Mtb infection (and its determinants), and comparing these to the distribution of TB disease case-notifications. We will also evaluate novel diagnostics for Mtb infection (QIAreach QFT) and sampling methodologies (convenience sampling in healthcare settings and community sampling based on satellite imagery), which may increase the feasibility of measuring Mtb infection at large scale. The overall aim is to provide high-resolution epidemiological data and provide new insights into methodologies which may be used by TB programmes globally.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85194154721&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0291215
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0291215
M3 - Article
C2 - 38787869
AN - SCOPUS:85194154721
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 19
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 5 May
M1 - e0291215
ER -