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The world is starting to win the war against tuberculosis, but drug-resistant forms pose a new threat. If there was any doubt that tuberculosis (TB) was fighting back, it was dispelled in 2005, at the Church of Scotland Hospital in the village of Tugela Ferry, South Africa. Doctors at the hospital, in a rough, remote corner of KwaZulu-Natal province, were hardened to people dying from gunshots and AIDS. But even they were puzzled and frightened when patients with HIV who were responding well to antiretroviral drugs began dying — rapidly — from TB. With ordinary TB, patients start to feel...

Multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB) are spreading at an alarming rate in Europe and will kill thousands unless health authorities halt the pandemic... "TB is an old disease that never went away, and now it is evolving with a vengeance," said Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO's Regional Director for Europe... TB is currently a worldwide pandemic that kills around 1.7 million people a year. The infection is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis and destroys patients' lung tissue, causing them to cough up the bacteria, which then spreads through the air and can be inhaled by others. Cases...

Enlarge ImageBreathtaking discovery? TB hospitals like this one in Guatemala increasingly see patients with drug-resistant strains and badly need new options. Credit: Malcolm Linton Thanks to a barroom conversation, researchers may have stumbled on a powerful drug combination to battle antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis (TB), a growing threat throughout the world. New work suggests that meropenem and clavulanate, both of which are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fight bacterial infections, tame some of the most virulent TB strains. An increasing number of people have multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis. Last year, the World...

Extensively drug-resistant disease deadlier and more common than thought, researchers find FRIDAY, Nov. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), is becoming more common and more deadly than previously thought, new research shows. People with XDR-TB are three times more likely to die than patients with other forms of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), according to the findings, published in the second November issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Researchers reviewed medical records of more than 1,400 patients in South Korea with both types of tuberculosis. MDR-TB patients who didn't respond to ofloxacin and at least...

A new test that can detect multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis in two days instead of the standard two to three months promises to help significantly improve treatment and prevent the spread of the airborne infection, the World Health Organization said on Monday. Multiple-drug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB, is a growing public health problem in the world. Five percent of new TB cases are resistant to first-line drugs. That is 450,000 of the nine million new TB cases that are detected each year, the W.H.O. says. In the United States, the prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis among foreign-born TB patients has been about 1.5 percent,...

PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa — The Jose Pearson TB Hospital here is like a prison for the sick. It is encircled by three fences topped with coils of razor wire to keep patients infected with lethal strains of tuberculosis from escaping. But at Christmastime and again around Easter, dozens of them cut holes in the fences, slipped through electrified wires or pushed through the gates in a desperate bid to spend the holidays with their families. Patients have been tracked down and forced to return; the hospital has quadrupled the number of guards. Many patients fear they will get out...

AP Medical Writer Drug-resistant tuberculosis is spreading even faster than medical experts had feared, the World Health Organization warned in report issued Tuesday. The rate of TB patients infected with the drug-resistant strain topped 20 percent in some countries, the highest ever recorded, the U.N. agency said. "Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable to see rates like this," said Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of WHO's "Stop TB" department. "This demonstrates what happens when you keep making mistakes in TB treatment." Though the report is the largest survey of drug-resistant TB, based on information collected between 2002 and 2006,...

'This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've co-operated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy.'— Man with drug resistant TB says he returned to U.S. despite risks to get treatment A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 told a newspaper he took one trans-Atlantic flight for his wedding and honeymoon and another because he feared for his life. Hundreds of health authorities around the world including Canada are now scrambling to track down passengers who were seated near the...

A man diagnosed with a rare strain of tuberculosis will be flown to Denver for treatment at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center. This morning, officials at Denver’s National Jewish Medical and Research Center weren’t sure when the now world-famous TB patient would arrive for treatment. "I think they’re still figuring out how he’s going to get here," said hospital spokesman William Allstetter. The unidentified patient was transferred from New York to Atlanta on a CDC airplane. Allstetter stressed that National Jewish, which is world renown for treatment of respiratory and immune disorders, is well-prepared to handle the case....

ATLANTA — A man with a rare and exceptionally dangerous form of tuberculosis likely entered the United States at the Champlain Port of Entry. That is according to a story in the online version of the Montreal Gazette today. In a press conference today, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said the Georgia man is infected with extensively drug resistant tuberculosis, also called XDR-TB. “We have no suspicion that this patient was highly infectious, in fact medical evidence would suggest that his potential for transmission would be on the low side, but we know it (the...