Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially severe infectious disease that affects the lungs in particular. Tuberculosis-causing bacteria are transmitted from one person to another through tiny droplets released through coughs and sneezes into the air.

Many tuberculosis strains are immune to the medications most commonly used to treat the disease. To cure the infection and avoid the development of antibiotic resistance, people with active tuberculosis must take many forms of medicine for several months.

Symptoms

Signs and symptoms of active TB include:

• Coughing that lasts three or more weeks

• Coughing up blood

• Chest pain, or pain with breathing or coughing

• Unintentional weight loss

• Fatigue

• Fever

• Night sweats

• Chills

• Loss of appetite

Other areas of the body, including your kidneys, spine, or brain, can also be affected by tuberculosis. Signs and symptoms differ according to the organs involved when TB happens outside your lungs. Spine tuberculosis can give you back pain, for instance, and tuberculosis in your kidneys can cause blood in your urine.

Causes

Bacteria that spread from person to person by microscopic droplets released into the air are the cause of tuberculosis. This can occur when someone coughs, talks, sneezes, spits, laughs, or sings with the untreated, active form of tuberculosis.

It's not easy to catch, even though tuberculosis is infectious. You're much more likely than a stranger to get tuberculosis from someone you live with or work with. Many individuals who have had effective opioid treatment for at least two weeks of active TB are no longer infectious.

Prevention

Your doctor may advise you to take medications to reduce your risk of developing active tuberculosis if you test positive for latent infection with TB. The active variety, as it affects the lungs, is the only type of tuberculosis that is infectious. So if you can prevent your latent TB from being operational, you're not going to spread TB to anyone else.

Protect your family and friends

Keep your germs to yourself if you have active TB. Treatment with TB medications normally takes a few weeks until you're no longer infectious. To help protect your friends and family from getting sick, follow these tips:

• Stay at home. In the first few weeks of treatment for active tuberculosis, don't go to work or school or sleep in a bed with other people.

• Ventilate the space. In small confined spaces where air does not pass, tuberculosis germs spread more easily. Open the windows and use a fan to blow indoor air outside if it isn't too cold outside.

• Cover the mouth. Anytime you chuckle, sneeze or cough, use a tissue to cover your mouth. In a jar, place the dirty tissue, seal it, and throw it away.

• Wear a mask. During the first three weeks of treatment, wearing a surgical mask when you're around other people may help reduce the risk of transmission.

Terminate the whole medication path

This is the most critical step in protecting yourself and others from tuberculosis that you will take. TB bacteria have a chance to evolve mutations that allow the most potent TB drugs to survive when you stop treatment early or miss doses. Far more deadly and difficult to handle are the resulting drug-resistant strains.

Immunizations

Babies have often been vaccinated with the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine in countries where tuberculosis is more common because it can prevent serious tuberculosis in infants. For general use in the United States, the BCG vaccine is not recommended because it is not very safe in adults. Dozens of new vaccines against TB are in different stages of development and research