"Tuberculosis"

Tuberculosis has decreased so rapidly and has changed its epidemiological feature so markedly in these several decades in Japan, that tuberculosis epidemiologists had done and have to do numerous studies to understand the situations and to adjust tuberculosis control programme of high prevalent country to that of low prevalent country. Main themes of epidemiological research are being focused on 1) the causes of stagnation of the decrease of tuberculosis incidence and estimation of future trend in Japan, 2) risk factors of development of disease at present when more than 95% of diseases are the exacerbation of the remote infection, 3) the efficacy and efficiency of each control measure to improve the existing programme in Japan, 4) the mode of tuberculosis infection in the community using RFLP analysis of tubercle bacilli, 5) epidemiology of tuberculosis in the developing countries where tuberculosis is increasing at present, and so on. Because of the increase of tuberculosis in the world, epidemiological research in tuberculosis is becoming more and more active to-day. It is being expected that epidemiological research on tuberculosis will have more and more fruitful results in near future.