Abstract
Congenital tuberculosis (CTB) due to maternal genitourinary (GU) TB infection is a rare occurrence, as infection of the genital tract in women generally leads to infertility. Increasing availability of assisted reproductive technology creates the potential for CTB to emerge as a significant problem. We describe five infants (two sets of twins and a singleton birth) conceived by in vitro fertilization who developed CTB. All five infants were born to mothers who had immigrated to the United States from India and none had GU TB diagnosed before the birth of their infected infants.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge Benjamin Wilkins, MD, PhD and Kaede Ota, MD from the Department of Pathology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for providing anatomic and pathology results that confirmed the diagnosis of case 1; Shakuntala Chandra, MD from the Division of Neonatology at Saint Peter's University Hospital for excellent clinical care of cases 1 and 2 and for thoughtful review and editing of the manuscript for accuracy of clinical details; Dr Karin McGowan and Janice Odebralski, Department of Microbiology, Drs David Munson, Sarbattama Sen and Heather French, Divison of Neonatology, Drs Jeffrey Bergelson, Jeffrey Gerber and Susan Coffin, Division of Infectious Diseases, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Dr Barbara Watson of the Philadelphia Department of Health for their assistance in the investigation and treatment of case 3; Elizabeth P Baorto, MD, Karen Galanowski, RN, Janet Cashman, RN, and Joan Crafton for gathering information for this case series and assuring excellent care for mother 3 and cases 4 and 5; Elena Sashkina, PhD of the Tuberculosis Center of the Public Health Research Institute in Newark, NJ for contributions to genotyping patient isolates; Lee Reichman, MD, MPH for review of the manuscript.
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Flibotte, J., Lee, G., Buser, G. et al. Infertility, in vitro fertilization and congenital tuberculosis. J Perinatol 33, 565–568 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2012.146
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2012.146
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