Tuberculosis (TB)
Tuberculosis isn’t history, and it’s much more dangerous than malaria or Ebola - Jens Erik Gould
image by: U.S. Embassy Harare
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The Danger of Ignoring Tuberculosis
A century or so ago, tuberculosis was everywhere. It killed babies and brides, firemen and heads of state. The colloquial term of the era, “consumption,” littered the obituary pages and underscored how ubiquitous the disease was. Tuberculosis was so pervasive it eventually consumed you.
Actually, “consumption” got its name from the severe weight loss that so many of the afflicted suffered. The other 19th-century nickname for tuberculosis was even more evocative: “the white plague,” on account of the ashen complexion of its victims.
The novelist Charles Dickens wrote of tuberculosis in 1838 as “a dread disease” which “medicine never cured,” and which “wealth never warded…
Resources
‘The Biggest Monster’ Is Spreading. And It’s Not the Coronavirus.
Tuberculosis kills 1.5 million people each year. Lockdowns and supply-chain disruptions threaten progress against the disease as well as H.I.V. and malaria.
Covid-19 Has Made Tuberculosis Even More Of A Forgotten Pandemic
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic goes well beyond the disease itself. It extends to neglected tropical diseases, as well as the so-called “big three” infectious diseases malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis, by crowding out R&D funds and disrupting non-Covid-19 related healthcare services.
Fighting Fire With Fire: Can We Kill Super-Resistant Mycobacteria With Viruses?
While new antibiotics such as bedaquiline, delamanid and pretomanid have been discovered, DR-TB continues to be very hard to manage. There is a desperate need for new and alternative therapies. One such alternative might be killing TB bacteria with viruses that destroy bacteria (i.e. bacteriophages).
The deadliest infectious disease is becoming drug-resistant
TB is currently the deadliest infectious disease, responsible for 1.6 million deaths last year, most of them in the developing world. And that’s not the scariest part. A rapidly growing number of patients are developing drug-resistant tuberculosis, which kills more people than any other drug-resistant pathogen.
A Lot Of People Think This Disease Is Extinct, But It’s A Top 10 Killer Globally
TB follows heart disease, stroke, lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as a top global killer.
Could a Tuberculosis Outbreak Happen Here?
We’re creating a series of conditions that make it more likely.
Deaths From TB Globally Outnumber HIV/AIDS
Hundreds of thousands more people world-wide suffer from tuberculosis than originally thought, and more now die from the infectious airborne disease than from HIV/AIDS, according to new data released Wednesday by the World Health Organization.
Meet The Sisters Who Invented The Tuberculosis Skin Test
We can reliably diagnose tuberculosis today thanks to Florence Siebert's persistence -- and the loyalty of her younger sister.
Study Offers New Clues on Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
Findings show that TB prevention efforts should focus not just on correct antibiotic treatment, but also on preventing airborne transmission.
The Most Neglected Disease
Tuberculosis isn’t history, and it’s much more dangerous than malaria or Ebola.
The Race for Faster Tuberculosis Tests
As drug-resistant strains of TB develop, researchers strive to detect it sooner.
Tuberculosis Is Rising Again, and Is Puzzling Our Drugs
Aided by poor treatment adherence, a new-old threat looms.
Tuberculosis kills more people than any other pathogenic illness
New drugs, vaccines and tests offer hope, though
Tuberculosis kills thousands of people every day – we aren’t doing enough to stop it
For most people in the West, TB seems to be a disease of the past, when it was still called consumption, and the ill were sent to sanitariums in the mountains or desert. But TB hasn’t gone away.
Tuberculosis, the forgotten pandemic relying on a 100-year-old vaccine
For TB, we are relying on a 100-year-old vaccine, known as BCG (short for Bacille Calmette-Guerin), which is still one of the most widely used vaccines globally. While it protects young children from the most severe forms of TB, the vaccine seems to give much less protection for adults. The BCG vaccine, unlike COVID vaccines, is a live vaccine, meaning it contains live (but weakened) bacteria. So it can’t be given safely to people with immune suppressing conditions, like HIV, because they could get infected from it. This means its use is limited in some people who most need protection.
Was Tuberculosis Born Out of Fire?
By damaging lungs and bringing people together, fire may have turned a soil microbe into a global pathogen.
Want to end TB? Diagnose and treat all forms of the disease
Tuberculosis should be a specter of the past, something only our great-grandparents feared and died of. Alas, although almost all cases of TB today are both preventable and treatable, several different strains and manifestations of the disease still sicken and kill millions of people every year.
Why Tuberculosis Is Back
New data from the World Health Organization shows that we have allowed a preventable, curable disease to become the world’s biggest communicable killer. The millenniums-old lung disease tuberculosis now outranks even H.I.V./AIDS in the number of lives it claims. The fact is that we’ve been very successful at curing people of TB since the 1950s — so why is this illness still such a scourge?
How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion
The deadly disease—and later efforts to control it—influenced trends for decades.
We’ve come up with a TB test that’s cheaper, quicker and more accurate
Our study focused on ways to improve the sputum smear test because it can be scaled up and implemented in communities.
The Danger of Ignoring Tuberculosis
Despite its reputation as an illness of the past, the deadly disease is as much of a threat to people in America as Ebola and Zika.
Stop TB Partnership
The Stop TB Partnership is leading the way to a world without tuberculosis (TB), a disease that is curable but still kills three people every minute. Founded in 2001, the Partnership's mission is to serve every person who is vulnerable to TB and ensure that high-quality diagnosis , treatment and care is available to all who need it.
TBFacts.org
The person in charge of the site and who does the main writing for the site is Annabel Kanabus. Annabel has an expert knowledge of HIV infection and Tuberculosis (TB) and has been writing about these subjects for more than thirty years. This included starting and being the volunteer chief executive for many years of the charity AVERT. Annabel has written a history of her time at AVERT and what it was like working for an HIV/AIDS charity in the early years of the HIV epidemic. History of AVERT. Annabel started the website www.avert.org which continues to be one of the most popular HIV/AIDS websites in the world. After a period of ill health Annabel left AVERT in 2011 and subsequently set up TBFacts.org, having learnt about the impact TB has on people with HIV.
Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative
TBVI is an independent non-profit foundation that facilitates the development of new vaccines to protect future generations against tuberculosis.
IAVI
Now, after decades of research, there is a renewed optimism for TB vaccines.
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is a speciality journal focusing on basic experimental research on tuberculosis, notably on bacteriological, immunological and pathogenesis aspects of the disease. The journal publishes original research and reviews on the host response and immunology of tuberculosis and the molecular biology, genetics and physiology of the organism.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The global TB mortality rate fell by 35 percent between 1990 and 2009, but TB remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with almost 9 million new cases reported each year.
California Tuberculosis Controllers Association
To eliminate of the threat of tuberculosis from California through leadership and the development of excellence in tuberculosis prevention and treatment.
CDC
TB is a disease caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacteria usually attack the lungs, but TB bacteria can attack any part of the body such as the kidney, spine, and brain. If not treated properly, TB disease can be fatal. TB disease was once the leading cause of death in the United States.
KidsHealth
One of the most dreaded diseases of the 19th century, TB was the eighth leading cause of death in children 1 to 4 years of age during the 1920s. As the general standard of living and medical care improved in the United States, the incidence of TB decreased. By the 1960s, it wasn't even in the top 10 causes of death among children of any age group.
MayoClinic
Once rare in developed countries, tuberculosis infections began increasing in 1985, partly because of the emergence of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. HIV weakens a person's immune system so it can't fight the TB germs. In the United States, because of stronger control programs, tuberculosis began to decrease again in 1993, but remains a concern.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
An ancient disease, TB remains one of the major causes of disability and death worldwide. In 2010, an estimated 8.8 million people fell ill with TB, including 1.1 million cases among people with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. Of the 1.4 million deaths, 95 percent occurred in developing countries. NIAID is part of the global research community that is committed to finding new ways to better understand, diagnose, treat, and ultimately prevent TB.
National Prevention Information Network
Welcome! Looking for the latest TB prevention news? Information on the connection between TB and HIV/AIDS?
ScienceDaily
Tuberculosis News
Todar's Online Textbook of Bacteriology
Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death in the world from a bacterial infectious disease. The disease affects 1.8 billion people/year which is equal to one-third of the entire world population.
WHO
Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborne infectious disease that is preventable and curable. WHO is working to dramatically reduce the burden of TB, and halve TB deaths and prevalence by 2015, through its Stop TB Strategy and supporting the Global Plan to Stop TB.
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