 |
The tuberculosis bacterium, Mycobacterium
tuberculosis, is easily spread through coughing
or sneezing. CREDIT: CDC/Dr. Ray Butler |
Doctors Report Tuberculosis Now 'Virtually Untreatable'
Feb 12, 2013 | Live Science | Marc Lallanilla
Medical experts are alarmed that strains of tuberculosis, or TB, have
emerged that are so virulent they're being called "virtually
untreatable," even with the most powerful drugs available.
The latest issue of the journal
Emerging Infectious Diseases,
published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reports
that cases of "totally drug-resistant" TB have now been seen in South
African clinics.
TB is a respiratory infection caused by the bacteria
Mycobacterium tuberculosis;
it was once widespread until antibiotics such as streptomycin were
developed in the years following World War II. Though TB was eliminated
in much of the industrialized world, pockets of the disease remained in
developing countries.
And now, TB is poised to make a dramatic — and deadly — comeback.
"Whatever we may have once optimistically thought, TB remains with
death, taxes and political
chicanery as being inevitable, unavoidable and deeply unpleasant," Andrew Bush and Ian Pavord, editors of the journal
Thorax, wrote in the latest issue.
"It shows every sign of weathering the storm of potent anti-tuberculous
medications," they added, noting that the disease is capable of
"potentially turning the clock back to the 1930s," when TB clinics and
sanitariums were commonplace.
Even doctors are concerned about catching the disease, which is easily
spread by coughing, sneezing or even speaking. Dr. Uvistra Naidoo
contracted a virulent case of TB while working in his pediatric clinic
in Cape Town, South Africa,
US News reports.
Within a few months, Naidoo had lost 30 pounds; an X-ray revealed his
right lung had filled with fluid. "One night I nearly passed away — it
didn't look good," he told US News.
The complex drug regimen required to treat Naidoo's TB was almost as
problematic as the disease itself. He developed Stevens-Johnson
syndrome, a deadly condition that causes layers of skin to separate from
each other, and he often bled from his eyes.
"The TB doesn't feel like it's killing you, but the drugs do," Naidoo
told US News. After three years of grueling treatment, he eventually
recovered, but he is left with permanent lung scarring.
Drug-resistant TB has already spread to the United States and other
developed countries. A hospital in New York City was struck with a case
of drug-resistant TB in the 1990s, according to the
Daily Mail. Of the 32 patients who caught the disease, only three survived.
And the U.K. is also reporting a 50 percent increase in tuberculosis cases over the past decade, according to the
Telegraph.
Roughly three-quarters of the cases of TB reported in the U.K. are seen
in immigrants from other regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa and
south Asia, according to the Telegraph.
The speed and ease with which TB spreads have helped make it
"unarguably the most successful human pathogen of all time," according
to Bush and Pavord of the journal Thorax.
