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Author notes

1. These authors contributed equally: Denis Awany, Helgard Claassen, Thomas Scriba, Al Leslie and Emily Wong.

Authors and Affiliations

1. South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative, Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine and Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology, University of Cape Town, Anzio Road, Observatory, Cape Town, 7935, South Africa

   Denis Awany, Simon C. Mendelsohn, Mzwandile Erasmus & Thomas J. Scriba

2. Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI), Durban & Somkhele, South Africa

   Helgard Claassen, Al Leslie & Emily B. Wong

3. South African Medical Research Council Genomics Platform, Cape Town, South Africa

   Nadia Carstens

4. Division of Infection and Immunology, University College London, London, UK

   Al Leslie

5. Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Heersink School of Medicine, University of Alabama Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

   Emily B. Wong

Contributions

AL and EBW conceived the idea.AL and EBW raised funds and/or provided the resources.HC was responsible for follow-up site-level activities, including recruitment, clinical management, and data collection.NC provided operational, technical, laboratory support, or project management.ME processed samples and performed the experiments.DA verified the underlying data.DA analysed the data.DA, HC, SCM, TJS, EBW, and AL interpreted the results and wrote the first draft.All authors had full access to the data, confirm the integrity of the data and its presentation, agree with its interpretation as discussed in the manuscript, and reviewed, revised, and approved the manuscript before submission. The corresponding author had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Denis Awany.

Competing interests

TJS is co-inventor of two patents of host-blood transcriptomic signatures of TB risk, RISK6 (Penn-Nicholson6) and RISK4 (Suliman4). The other authors disclose no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical approval for the baseline and follow-up studies was obtained from the Ethics Committees of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Partners Institutional Review Board, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and University College London. All study activities were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided informed consent.

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