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Tuberculosis (or TB) is an infectious disease, usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria.[1] TB generally affects the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body.[1]
Most people affected by TB do not have symptoms, and the disease is not active. This is called latent tuberculosis.[1] However, about 10% of latent infections progress to active disease, which, if left untreated, kills about half of those affected.[1]
The classic symptoms of active TB are a chronic cough, with blood containing sputum, a fever, night sweats, and weight loss.[1]
The last symptom of weight loss can be so pronounced that it gave TB it historic name of "consumption".[3]
Infection of other organs can cause a wide range of symptoms, including weakness, night sweats, and swollen lymph nodes.[4]
Active TB in the lungs is very contagious. In fact, it is so infectious that a person can spread it through the air, by something as simple as coughing, spitting, speaking or sneezing.[1][5]
And active infection is more likely to occur in people with HIV or AIDS, those who are immunocompromised, and in those who smoke.[1]
On the other hand, people with latent TB do not spread the disease.[1]
Diagnosis of active TB is based on chest X-rays, as well as microscopic examination, and culture of body fluids.[6]
Diagnosis of latent TB is made using the tuberculin skin test (which is also called the Mantoux skin test), or blood tests.[6]
Prevention of TB involves screening those at high risk, early detection and treatment of cases, and prompt vaccination with the bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine.[7][8][9] Those at high risk include household, workplace, and social contacts of people with active TB.[9]
Treatment requires the use of multiple antibiotics, over a long period of time.[1] Antibiotic resistance is making TB harder to treat, with increasing rates of multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis (called MDR-TB), and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (called XDR-TB).[1]
. For new pulmonary cases of susceptible tuberculosis, treatment lasts 6 months. However, the duration of various forms of TB may vary. Anti-TB medications known as first-line drugs (FLDs) are used to treat patients with susceptible tuberculosis[10]. As previously discussed, MDR-TB and XDR-TB needed much longer treatment durations than susceptible TB. The duration of DR-TB therapy ranges from 11 months (known as Short treatment regimen (STR)) [11] to 24 months using 5 to 6 different types of drugs that are more toxic than the drugs used in simple TB, and anti-TB agents used for treatment of DR-TB are classified as second line drugs (SLDs).