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Gonorrhoea in the asymptomatic patient: presentation and the role of contact tracing for heterosexual men and women and for homosexual men.

Clinically silent gonorrhoea is the major problem in the control of the disease. Only 12 per cent of infected women reported in 1974 because of symptoms, compared with 97 per cent of infected heterosexual men and only 35 per cent of homosexual men with gonococcal proctitis alone. Homosexual men, compared with heterosexual men, had twice as many subsequent sexual contacts after infection and had a higher incidence of early syphilis. Eighty-four per cent had experienced passive anorectal intercourse. Ninety-seven per cent of men with gonococcal urethritis reported because of symptoms, but occasi

Animal disease traceability: evaluation of simulated foot-and-mouth disease outbreak metrics with implementation of improved contact tracing of cattle.

INTRODUCTION: In the event of a Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) introduction in the United States (US) animal health officials will need to rapidly trace infected animals and their contacts. Electronic identification (EID) and digital tracing of cattle could improve the speed and accuracy of tracing efforts. This study evaluated the impacts of improving cattle traceability during an FMD outbreak in the US. METHODS: InterSpread Plus (ISP) was used to simulate FMD outbreaks with a US national livestock population file and animal movement parameters. Scenarios were defined by starting location (Cal

Factors associated with tuberculosis contact tracing from the perspective of patients: a cross-sectional survey across three districts in Ghana.

BACKGROUND: In Ghana, tuberculosis (TB) case detection remains suboptimal, with only 29-34% of estimated TB cases detected, well below the African regional average of 47% and the World Health Organization (WHO) target of 70%. Contact tracing is an important strategy for identifying exposed contacts and potentially undiagnosed TB cases, thereby supporting early diagnosis and interruption of transmission. This study examined patient-reported factors associated with successful TB contact tracing in three selected districts across three regions in Ghana. METHODS: This study used an analytical cro…

Initial and Subsequent Engagement of Recently Diagnosed Persons Living with HIV in Contact Tracing Interviews Conducted by Public Health Practitioners.

Contact tracing is effective in disrupting HIV transmission, but may be limited by the reluctance or inability of recently HIV-diagnosed persons (RDPs) to engage collaboratively with public health. Leveraging an ongoing study endeavoring to increase the yield of standard-of-care contact tracing by re-interviewing a subset of RDPs, we assessed RDP engagement during first and second interviews and compared the two. We used Likert scale scores to develop and employ a 35-point index tool, to assess engagement during first interviews (standard of care) and second interviews (executed in a parent st…

Leveraging Polio Geographic Information System Platforms in the African Region for Mitigating COVID-19 Contact Tracing and Surveillance Challenges: Viewpoint.

BACKGROUND: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is an urgent public health crisis. Estimated models projected over 150,000 deaths and 4,600,000 hospitalizations in the first year of the disease in the absence of adequate interventions. Therefore, electronic contact tracing and surveillance have critical roles in decreasing COVID-19 transmission; yet, if not conducted properly, these methods can rapidly become a bottleneck for synchronized data collection, case detection, and case management. While the continent is currently reporting relatively low COVID-19 cases, digitized contact tracing…

Детерминанты здоровья, стремящиеся к поведению укусов животных в бешенстве, эндемичном на юге Бутана: общинное обследование контактных контактов.

Укусы собак являются основным источником инфекции бешенства и смерти у людей, что составляет 99% всех случаев. Мы провели исследование по выявлению контактов в целях оценки состояния здоровья людей, стремящихся к лечению, и состояния их здоровья после потенциального воздействия бешенства в бешенстве на юге Бутана. МЕТОДЫ: На основе информации, содержащейся в регистре профилактики бешенства после воздействия (ИПБ), были отслежены жертвы, подвергшиеся воздействию животных, которые посетили пять больниц на юге Бутана в период с января по март 2017 года, и получены дополнительные данные с их помощ

Совпадение в аннотации оригинала
BACKGROUND: Dog bites are the main source of rabies infection and death in humans, contributing up to 99% of all cases. We conducted a conta … (444) of people could be traced and additional 8% (39) who did not seek PEP was identified through contact tracing. Therefore, a total of 483 people were interviewed. Seventy one percent (344/483) of exposure were due to animal bites of which 80% (365/455) were considered to be provoked incidents. Common reasons for not seeking health care included assumptions t …

Belgium's SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing effectively curbed transmission, yet challenges persist in terms of delays, scalability and population adherence.

BACKGROUND: Through contact tracing, researchers could reconstruct chains of linked cases by linking High-Risk Exposure Contacts (HREC) testing positive to their index case. We present chain-level descriptives, delays and an individual-level analysis of the events that determine chain progression. METHODS: We used data from contact tracing outside of collectivities between September 2020 and March 2022 in Belgium. We present chain-level generation counts and structure. The individual-level analysis focusses on the events necessary to establish transmission chains from index cases: inclusion, s…

California's COVID-19 Virtual Training Academy: Rapid Scale-Up of a Statewide Contact Tracing and Case Investigation Workforce Training Program.

Case investigation (CI) and contact tracing (CT) are key to containing the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread community transmission necessitates a large, diverse workforce with specialized knowledge and skills. The University of California, San Francisco and Los Angeles partnered with the California Department of Public Health to rapidly mobilize and train a CI/CT workforce. In April through August 2020, a team of public health practitioners and health educators constructed a training program to enable learners from diverse backgrounds to quickly acquire the competencies necessary to function effe…

Impact of a nurse-led enhanced monitoring, management and contact tracing intervention for chronic hepatitis B in England, 2015-2017.

Around 200,000 people live with chronic hepatitis B in England. Despite national guidance on identification and management of cases and their close contacts, testing rates of close contacts is as low as 43% in high prevalence areas of London. Our study aimed to determine whether a nurse-led enhanced management and contact tracing of chronically infected individuals improved testing uptake, vaccination and onward referral of close contacts. The study was conducted across Greater Manchester and East of England regions between October 2015 and July 2017. All HBV chronically infected individuals r…

Lessons Learned from Community Contact Tracing of Women Disengaged from an Urban Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission Program in Uganda.

PURPOSE: Community tracing for disengaged pregnant and post-partum women with HIV(PPWH) shows promise, yet few studies detail the practical challenges of tracing, particularly in the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission programs (PMTCT). Standard guidelines and evidence-based approaches remain lacking. We share lessons from our experiences in tracing disengaged PPWH in an urban PMTCT program in Uganda, where nurse counselors joined outreach teams to trace lost PPWH women via calls and home visits. DESCRIPTION: The parent study was a prospective case–control study conducted in Uganda at s

Genotyped cluster investigations versus standard contact tracing: comparative impact on latent tuberculosis infection cascade of care in a low-incidence region.

BACKGROUND: Cluster and contact investigations aim to identify and treat individuals with tuberculosis (TB) and latent TB infection (LTBI). Although genotyped cluster investigations may be superior to contact investigations in generating additional epidemiological links, this may not necessarily translate into reducing infections. Here, we investigated the impact of genotyped cluster investigations compared to standard contact investigations on the LTBI care cascade in a low incidence setting. METHODS: A matched case-control study nested within a cohort of 6,921 TB cases from Florida (2009-20

Evaluation of mpox contact tracing activities and data collection in EU/EEA countries during the 2022 multicountry outbreak in nonendemic countries.

To control human-to-human mpox transmission during the 2022 outbreak, European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) countries conducted case investigation and contact tracing (CT). We aimed to provide an overview of CT activities, describe CT data collection practices, and identify related facilitators, barriers, and potential opportunities for improvement. Between April 03, 2023 and May 12, 2023, a survey was distributed to CT stakeholders in 30 EU/EEA countries, asking about mpox CT activities and data collection and requesting to rank enablers, barriers, and improvements for CT on a five…

Vaccine effectiveness against onward transmission of SARS-CoV2-infection by variant of concern and time since vaccination, Belgian contact tracing, 2021.

BACKGROUND: During the first half of 2021, we observed high vaccine effectiveness (VE) against SARS-CoV2-infection. The replacement of the alpha-'variant of concern' (VOC) by the delta-VOC and uncertainty about the time course of immunity called for a re-assessment. METHODS: We estimated VE against transmission of infection (VET) from Belgian contact tracing data for high-risk exposure contacts between 26/01/2021 and 14/12/2021 by susceptibility (VEs) and infectiousness of breakthrough cases (VEi) for a complete schedule of Ad26.COV2.S, ChAdOx1, BNT162b2, mRNA-1273 as well as infection-acquir…

Ebola virus disease contact tracing activities, lessons learned and best practices during the Duport Road outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia, November 2015.

BACKGROUND: Contact tracing is one of the key response activities necessary for halting Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) transmission. Key elements of contact tracing include identification of persons who have been in contact with confirmed EVD cases and careful monitoring for EVD symptoms, but the details of implementation likely influence their effectiveness. In November 2015, several months after a major Ebola outbreak was controlled in Liberia, three members of a family were confirmed positive for EVD in the Duport Road area of Monrovia. The cluster provided an opportunity to implement and evalua…

Notes from the Field: Development of a Contact Tracing System for Ebola Virus Disease - Kambia District, Sierra Leone, January-February 2015.

Kambia District is located in northwestern Sierra Leone along the international border with Guinea. The district is dominated by forest and swamp habitat and has a population of approximately 270,000 persons (approximately 5% of the nation's population) who live in rural villages and predominantly subsist on farming and trading. During 2014-2015, the remoteness of the area, a highly porous border with Guinea, and strong traditional beliefs about health care and sickness led to unique challenges in controlling the Ebola Virus Disease (Ebola) outbreak within the district.

[Contact tracing as a part of HIV infection prevention. Current practice and attitudes of general practitioners and hospital physicians; preliminary results].

All doctors that had reported a newly-identified HIV infected person to the national HIV surveillance unit during a nine months period were traced and interviewed for one year later. The results of the interviews that related to 102 out of 195 (52%) reports were compared between the 48 interviewed general practitioners (GPs) and the 33 interviewed hospital doctors (HDs). Both GPs and HDs found it difficult to give a positive HIV test result and wanted to co-work with trained counsellors for the partner notification (PN) process. It was neither a routine for all GPs nor for all HDs to ask the p

Importance of Contact Tracing in the Management of Pediatric Tuberculosis in Some Diagnostic and Treatment Centers of the Centre Region of Cameroon.

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the leading causes of death among children under the age of 5 years. In some resource-limited communities, contact tracing interventions are generally used to curb this problem. We aimed to assess the effect of contact tracing interventions on the management of pediatric TB in the Centre Region of Cameroon. METHODS: The study was done in 14 diagnostic and treatment centers having a mixed urban-rural population with a high burden of TB. A mixed method including assessment of pediatric TB epidemiological trends, operational data from 2019 to 2024, co…

Trace explosives sampling for security applications (TESSA) study: Evaluation of procedures and methodology for contact sampling efficiency.

The detection of trace amounts of explosive materials is critical to the security at mass transit centers (e.g., airports and railway stations). In a typical screening process, a trap is used to probe a surface of interest to collect and transfer particulate residue to a detector for analysis. The collection of residues from the surface being probed is widely viewed as the limiting step in this process. A multi-institutional study was performed to establish a methodology for the evaluation of sampling media collection efficiencies. Dry deposited residues of 1,3,5-trinitroperhydro-1,3,5-triazin

Detection of trace metallic elements in oral lichenoid contact lesions using SR-XRF, PIXE, and XAFS.

Oral lichen planus (OLP) and oral lichenoid contact lesions (OLCL) are chronic inflammatory mucocutaneous reactions with a risk of malignant transformation that alter the epithelium. OLP and OLCL have similar clinical and histopathological features and it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. Metallic restorations are suspected to generate OLCLs. Trace metal analysis of OLCL specimens may facilitate the discrimination of symptoms and identification of causative metallic restorations. The purpose of this study was to assess OLCL tissue samples for the prevalence of metallic elements d

QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube as a Confirmatory Test for Tuberculin Skin Test in Tuberculosis Contact Tracing: A Noninferiority Clinical Trial.

BACKGROUND: Screening strategies based on interferon-γ release assays in tuberculosis contact tracing may reduce the need for preventive therapy without increasing subsequent active disease. METHODS: We conducted an open-label, randomized trial to test the noninferiority of a 2-step strategy with the tuberculin skin test (TST) followed by QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube (QFT-GIT) as a confirmatory test (the TST/QFT arm) to the standard TST-alone strategy (TST arm) for targeting preventive therapy in household contacts of patients with tuberculosis. Participants were followed for 24 months after r…