Does antiretroviral treatment increase the infectiousness of smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis?

BACKGROUND: Understanding of the effects of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and antiretroviral treatment (ART) on Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission dynamics remains limited. We undertook a cross-sectional study among household contacts of smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) cases to assess the effect of established ART on the infectiousness of TB. METHOD: Prevalence of tuberculin skin test (TST) positivity was compared between contacts of index cases aged 2–10 years who were HIV-negative, HIV-positive but not on ART, on ART for <1 year and on ART for ⩾1 year. Random-effects logistic regression was used to take into account clustering within households. RESULTS: Prevalence of M. tuberculosis infection in contacts of HIV-negative patients, HIV-positive patients on ART ⩾1 year and HIV-positive patients not on ART/on ART <1 year index cases was respectively 44%, 21% and 22%. Compared to contacts of HIV-positive index cases not on ARTor recently started on ART, the odds of TST positivity was similar in contacts of HIV-positive index cases on ART ⩾1 year (adjusted OR [aOR] 1.0, 95%CI 0.3–3.7). The odds were 2.9 times higher in child contacts of HIV-negative index cases (aOR 2.9, 95%CI 1.0–8.2). CONCLUSIONS: We found no evidence that established ART increased the infectiousness of smear-positive, HIV-positive index cases.