How can tb kill you

New York and Los Angeles , for instance, are among cities that have seen recent outbreaks. These cities maintain at least marginal surveillance, in which people are screened for symptoms when they arrive from a destination where it is endemic.

If they are infected, patients are placed onto supervised treatment. Just last year Vermont had a mini-outbreak, in which eight people were infected at a rural K-8 school. In rural Alabama, an ongoing mini-outbreak has already killed three people and sickened over 70 others, with more new cases expected. While U. To eliminate TB, we need better disease surveillance and monitoring in all countries, but especially locations where it is endemic, to help prevent outbreaks and get people into treatment.

And these tests need to work on adults and children. Making sure that TB patients get the support they need to comply with the months-long treatment regimen will also help. For those with multidrug-resistant TB, we need humane quarantine systems and a pipeline of non-toxic drugs so they have a reasonable chance of survival. If the number of people who still get infected with TB and the number of people who ultimately die from the disease are not impetus for us to pay more attention, surely the specter of a drug-resistant, airborne killer with a 70 percent death rate is a fate not worth tempting.

BCG is a vaccine for TB disease. BCG is used in many countries, but it is not generally recommended in the United States. BCG vaccination does not completely prevent people from getting TB. It may also cause a false positive tuberculin skin test. However, persons who have been vaccinated with BCG can be given a tuberculin skin test or TB blood test. If you have latent TB infection but not TB disease, your doctor may want you to take a drug to kill the TB germs and prevent you from developing TB disease.

The decision about taking treatment for latent infection will be based on your chances of developing TB disease. Some people are more likely than others to develop TB disease once they have TB infection. This includes people with HIV infection, people who were recently exposed to someone with TB disease, and people with certain medical conditions. TB disease can be treated by taking several drugs for 6 to 12 months. It is very important that people who have TB disease finish the medicine, and take the drugs exactly as prescribed.

If they stop taking the drugs too soon, they can become sick again; if they do not take the drugs correctly, the germs that are still alive may become resistant to those drugs. TB that is resistant to drugs is harder and more expensive to treat. In some situations, staff of the local health department meet regularly with patients who have TB to watch them take their medications. This is called directly observed therapy DOT.

In a proportion of people, however, the infection becomes active and begins to destroy the tissues of the organ it has invaded. Most commonly this is the lungs but TB can also be extrapulmonary, affecting other parts of the body including the spine in which case it is called Pott's disease , the kidneys, the meninges which are the membranes covering the brain , and the lymph nodes.

In general the infection progresses slowly. If affected persons do not receive treatment, roughly one third of those with active TB die within two years and another third within five years. The epidemiological significance of this long period between onset of symptoms and death is that during all this time the affected person is coughing and spreading the TB bacillus to others in his or her entourage.

The TB bacillus causes a process called caseation, a word derived from the Latin for cheese. The slowly progressive inflammation of TB destroys the tissues and leaves in their place a thick cheesy substance. Especially if more than one organ is affected this leads the person to lose weight in a dramatic fashion, almost as if they are being consumed by the disease.

If you have active TB, the bacteria are making you ill and you might be passing TB on to other people. Active TB can be very harmful to your health, but it can be cured with a course of medicine. You are not ill and you cannot pass TB on to others. The good news is that latent TB can be treated to prevent this happening.