First outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in Denmark involving six Danish-born cases
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Background: Denmark is a low-incidence country for tuberculosis (TB) and multidrug-resistant (MDR) TB at 5 and 0.05 cases per 100,000 population, respectively. Until 2018, the transmission of MDR-TB was nonexistent except for a few pairwise related family cases. In this study, we describe the first MDR-TB outbreak in Denmark. Methods: On the basis of genotyping of all Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) culture-positive cases in Denmark spanning 3 decades, 6 molecular- and epidemiologically linked Danish-born cases were identified as the first cluster of an MDR-TB in Denmark. The primary case was diagnosed posthumously in 2010 followed by 5 epidemiologically linked cases from 2018 to 2019. Results and conclusion: Through a combination of routine Mtb genotyping and clinical epidemiological surveillance data, we identified the first Danish MDR-TB outbreak spanning 10 years and were able to disclose the specific transmission pathways in detail, which helped guide the outbreak investigations. The occurrence of an MDR-TB outbreak in a resource-rich low TB incidence setting such as Denmark highlights the importance of a collaborative control system combining classic contact tracing; timely identification of drug-resistant TB through rapid diagnostics; and a close collaboration between clinicians and classical- and molecular epidemiologists for the benefit of TB control.
Original language | English |
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Journal | International Journal of Infectious Diseases |
Volume | 117 |
Pages (from-to) | 258-263 |
Number of pages | 6 |
ISSN | 1201-9712 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
No funding was received for this work. The study was reported to the Danish Data Protection Agency through the Compliance Division at Statens Serum Institut. The study was purely register-based and did not involve any study participants. For those reasons and according to Danish legislation, scientific ethical approval was not required.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
- contact tracing, Denmark, MDR-TB, TB, Tuberculosis, whole genome sequence WGS
Research areas
ID: 301453792