Important notes:
1) TB is common in parts of Mexico, central and South America. Typically it is “ordinary” (not drug resistant) TB. However, this man is known to have one of the forms of drug resistant TB.
2) TB is very slow growing, by bacterial standards, much like its closest relative, Leprosy. So about the only way to tell if it is drug resistant, and how drug resistant, is to give the patient an antibiotic, and wait a while to see if it works. If not, then different antibiotics. But this can only be done if the patient continues to take their antibiotics and continues to be monitored. If they take off, like this man, they do not know how resistant his TB is.
It is hard to tell from looking at the bacteria whether it is alive or dead, but this is helped by the re-discovery of a chemical stain that live bacteria will uptake, but dead bacteria will not.
3) Once a person has been exposed (infected) with TB, they need to take one kind of drug for about six months to eliminate it from their system. If the disease has gone into an active form, they must take different drugs for a year or two.
4) The known kinds of TB are “ordinary” TB, just called TB, then Drug Resistant TB (DR-TB), Multiple Drug Resistant (MDR-TB), EXtensively Drug Resistant (XDR-TB), and Completely Drug Resistant (CDR-TB).
Fortunately, DR-TB is scarce, but becoming more common in third and fourth world countries, and is treatable with low mortality. MDR-TB can still be treated in first world nations. XDR-TB has a substantial mortality rate with treatment. And there have been only two CDR-TB outbreaks, both in India, and both of which killed everyone infected, so burned themselves out.
5) TB, which used to be called “consumption” and “the white plague”, can flare up in about any organ in the body, though also typically attacks the lungs.
“The classic symptoms of active TB infection are a chronic cough with blood-tinged sputum, fever, night sweats, and weight loss.” From there it can attack the nervous system, brain and spinal cord (causing paralysis), heart, skin, muscles, and internal organs. Some people looked healthy, then just died.
In the past, it sometimes resulted in peculiar symptoms like hyper-sexuality, hyper-creativity, insanity, etc.
In its epidemic form, it caused cultural trauma and morbid thought throughout Europe. What we associate with the Victorian and Gothic ‘looks’, are all based in ‘the TB look’. Pale, gaunt, sickly looking.
TB sanitariums used to be common, and were distinguished by their prominent smokestacks for furnaces used to burn mattresses and linens.
Here is a list of celebrities, artists, writers and others who were afflicted with TB. You might be surprised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tuberculosis_cases
Did I miss seeing Edgar Allen Poe on that writer list? He died from it. (according to resources I used to write a report )
Wiki lists various possibilities.
The new Hollywood diet! (With some minor side effects - who cares.) The Fabulous People will be paying good money to contract it!