FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 342:246-248 January 27, 2000 Number 4 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text PDF Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited PubMed Citation

The risk of acquiring tuberculosis varies according to occupation and is high among funeral-home workers.¹ Embalmers are at particularly high risk for reactivity on tuberculin skin testing.² The increased risk may be due to exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis during the embalming process, which involves the aspiration of blood and other body fluids from the cadaver, resulting in the generation of potentially infectious aerosols. To our knowledge, however, the transmission of M. tuberculosis from a cadaver to an embalmer, with the subsequent development of active tuberculosis, has not been described.

DNA fingerprinting by restriction-fragment–length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis can be useful in . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Case Reports

Patient 1

Patient 2

Methods

Results

Discussion

Source Information

From the Division of Infectious Diseases (T.R.S., W.R.B., R.E.C.) and the Department of Pathology (S.H.), Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; the Baltimore City Health Department Eastern Chest Clinic (T.R.S., D.S.P., R.E.C.); and the Departments of Epidemiology (T.R.S., D.S.P., R.E.C.), International Health (W.R.B., R.E.C.), and Environmental Health Sciences (R.R.G.), Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health — all in Baltimore.

Address reprint requests to Dr. Sterling at the Division of Infectious Diseases, 1830 E. Monument St., Rm. 444, Baltimore, MD 21287, or at tsterls@jhmi.edu.

References

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Cahn, P., Perez, H., Ben, G., Ochoa, C. (2003). Tuberculosis and HIV: A Partnership Against the Most Vulnerable. J Int Assoc Physicians AIDS Care (Chic Ill) 2: 106-123 [Abstract]  
• Lee, A. S. G., Tang, L. L. H., Lim, I. H. K., Bellamy, R., Wong, S.-Y. (2002). Discrimination of Single-Copy IS6110 DNA Fingerprints of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Isolates by High-Resolution Minisatellite-Based Typing. J. Clin. Microbiol. 40: 657-659 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Lauzardo, M., Lee, P., Duncan, H., Hale, Y. (2001). Transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to a Funeral Director During Routine Embalming. Chest 119: 640-642 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Hopewell, P. C. (2000). Targeting Tuberculosis Prevention. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 162: 2017-2018 [Full Text]  
• Johnson, K. R., Braden, C. R., Cairns, K. L., Field, K. W., Colombel, A. C., Yang, Z., Woodley, C. L., Morlock, G. P., Weber, A. M., Boudreau, A. Y., Bell, T. A., Onorato, I. M., Valway, S. E., Stehr-Green, P. A. (2000). Transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis From Medical Waste. JAMA 284: 1683-1688 [Abstract] [Full Text]