A small outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis in non-close contact patrons of a bar.

Four habitual drinking and smoking patients with pulmonary tuberculosis who were thought to have had no contact with one another were admitted to our hospital. During admission, we found that they were regular visitors of the same bar. To investigate the possibility of outbreak, we analyzed the tuberculosis isolates from them by restriction fragment length polymorphism. Such analysis showed identical chromosomal DNA restriction patterns of these 4 culture isolates. We concluded that these patients were considered to represent a mini-outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis, although there was little, if any, contact among them while in or out of the bar.