Untreatable TB called 'a death sentence'
New tuberculosis resists most drugs
BY NANCY KERCHEVAL
BLOOMBERG NEWS
March 24, 2006
A strain of virtually untreatable tuberculosis has been diagnosed, raising concern about a worldwide epidemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The strain, known as extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis or XDR TB, resists all so-called first-line drugs and three of the six classes of second-line drugs, the CDC said in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
"The emergence of XDR TB is cause for concern because it is widely distributed geographically, including in the United States, and renders patients virtually untreatable with available drugs," the CDC study said.
The strain grew to about 350 cases worldwide between 2000 and 2004, primarily in South Korea, eastern Europe and western Asia, the CDC said. In the United States, 74 cases were reported.
The development follows the spread of what was called multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the 1990s. Known as MDR TB, it requires the use of less effective, more toxic and costlier drugs than the so-called first-line medications.
"Importantly, the emergence of MDR TB 15 years ago was a harbinger of a pandemic; this scenario must be prevented from happening with XDR TB," the CDC warned.
Tuberculosis causes lesions on the lungs and leads to coughing, fever, weight loss and chest pain. About 9 million people a year become ill with the disease worldwide, and 2 million of them die, the CDC said.
In the industrialized nations of Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Britain and the United States, XDR TB increased from 3% of drug-resistant cases in 2000 to 11% in 2004, the CDC said.
U.S. patients with XDR TB were 64% more likely to die during treatment than patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, according to a data collected from 1993 to 2002.
"It's basically a death sentence," said Dr. Marcos Espinale, executive secretary of the World Health Organization's Stop TB Partnership. "If people are failing first- and second-line drugs and we don't have in the pipeline a new drug for immediate use, that's a crisis."
Dr. Henry Blumberg, an Emory University medical school professor, said the figures are preliminary, and the problem may be bigger than the numbers indicate.
Some drugs under development might become effective treatments for these difficult forms of TB. But CDC funding for TB control and research hasn't kept up with inflation, Blumberg said.
The heightened concern comes as U.S. tuberculosis cases fell to 14,093 in 2005 from 14,516 in 2004, the CDC said. The rate of infection, 4.8 cases per 100,000 people, was the lowest since reporting began in 1953.
However, the TB rate in foreign-born people in the United States was 8.7 times that of U.S. natives, the CDC said. Most of the foreign-born cases in 2005 involved people from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China.
"Worsening resistance around the world poses a problem in the U.S., said Dr. Kenneth Cas"
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Here's the US Secretary of Health & Human Services 500 Day Plan
Snip, the very last item, Expanding the international network of early-warning infectious disease surveillance.
Personal Note: "International" does not translate to handling the ever-increasing strains of TB and other infectious diseases inflicted upon Americans in America by virtually uncontrolled access and abuse by illegal aliens.
500 days means potentially hundreds or thousands of American citizens facing medical tests, fear of infecting their families and medical expense (especially those lacking health insurance) due to the influx of illegals.
Book Reopened on Infectious Diseases
One of the things epidemiologist have been looking at for quite awhile is the reemergences of infectious diseases that were previously considered eradicated. These "new strains" are predicted to come back as super strains... with a vengenance.