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American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 155, No. 7 : 654-663
Copyright © 2002 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health


ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS

Determination of the Prevalence of Infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis among Persons Vaccinated against Bacillus Calmette-Guérin in South Korea

Beat E. Neuenschwander1,2, Marcel Zwahlen1, Sang Jae Kim3, Eun Gyu Lee3 and Hans L. Rieder4

1 Federal Office of Public Health, Berne, Switzerland.
2 Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Berne, Berne, Switzerland.
3 Korean Institute of Tuberculosis, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
4 International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Paris, France.

The prevalence of tuberculous infection was estimated among 12,032 persons with a Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination scar and 7,788 persons without such a scar who participated in a nationwide tuberculin skin test survey conducted in the Republic of Korea in 1975. The analysis was built upon mixture models that captured the heterogeneity of indurations arising from tuberculous infection, cross-reactions due to infection with environmental mycobacteria, and BCG vaccination. The three distributions were allowed to vary by age, sex, and BCG vaccination status in the Bayesian manner, according to the prior opinion of the authors. Estimated prevalences of tuberculous infection were similar among persons with a BCG scar and persons without one: 7.5% (95% credibility interval (CI): 3.1, 12.5) and 5.2% (95% CI: 4.2, 6.3), respectively, at age 0–4 years and 87.3% (95% CI: 84.0, 90.2) and 84.0% (95% CI: 81.9, 85.8), respectively, at age 25–29 years. From this analysis it can be concluded that mixture models allow investigators, for the first time, to estimate the prevalence of tuberculous infection not only in unvaccinated persons but also in the BCG-vaccinated population. Mixture models are a versatile tool for analyzing diagnostic test data and more general classification problems of considerable complexity.

Bayes theorem;; BCG vaccine;; mixture model;; Mycobacterium bovis;; prevalence;; tuberculin test;; tuberculosis

Abbreviations: BCG, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin;; PPD, purified protein derivative;; PPD-S, purified protein derivative standard;; TU, tuberculin units.


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