Drug Resistant TB 'More Severe'

BBC ^ | 12-16-2006

[mtbopfuyn]

we have not been serious about controlling TB

Obviously since there's more and more cases now days.

[Paleo Conservative]

Why doesn't anyone use bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections?

[Gay State Conservative]

Just one more thing we have to thank our junkies and illegal aliens for.

[Kozak]

http://www.intralytix.com/Intral_Human.htm

[Dick Bachert]

...and thanks to the 20 million illegals here, we will soon be able to add the United States to that list.

Thank you, Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove, Mr. Clinton, et al.

[null and void]

Excellent question.

[Prodigal Son]

The biggest problem is patients failing to complete a full course of the drugs.

Even though symptoms might have disappeared, small amounts of the bacteria may remain, and are capable of mutating.

Human nature bites itself in the keister sometimes. You take 75% of the drugs, you start to feel fine, you don't take the rest of the pills...

[WatchingInAmazement]

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/aug05/05-08-31.html

Dr. Madeleine Cosman, Esq. is a national authority on the diseases brought into our country by illegal aliens, who of course are not given health examinations required of all legal immigrants. Apparently, some people would like to prevent her from presenting her message to the public.

Dr. Cosman, who is both a Ph.D. and a lawyer, described the infectious diseases now spreading across the United States. Contagious diseases that our country wiped out years ago, such as malaria, polio, tuberculosis, and hepatitis, and rare diseases of Third World poverty such as leprosy, Chagas Disease, and Dengue Fever, are coming in.

The Centers for Disease Control reported 38,291 California cases of tuberculosis that included Multiple Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, which is 60 percent fatal and for which treatment costs $200,000 to $1,200,000 per patient. Illegal aliens are also bringing in syphilis and gonorrhea.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Now! Now! Now! Our little Diverse one's are merely transmitting the diseases Americans will not transmit.

[dljordan]

"Just one more thing we have to thank our junkies and illegal aliens for."

I remember the days when you used to have to have a health card to work in restaurants. They checked you for TB.

[Gay State Conservative]

Thanks to the "patients' rights" movement we now have many,*many* thousands of Typhoid Marys on the loose in this country.

Bring back the concept of quarantine,I say.

[WatchingInAmazement]

I remember the days when you used to have to have a health card to work in restaurants. They checked you for TB.

You are right, I've forgotten that. I wonder why they did away with it. The ACLU probably decided the test was "discriminatory".

[Don Corleone]

This once eradicated disease is now coming across our southern border in wholesale lots as are other diseases such as whooping cough STD's and who knows what.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

In the early 1970's, I was coughing and breaking ribs. The docs would examine me and say "You've got broken ribs. Here's some codeine." Finally I went to Milwaukee general. They told me, "You've got broken ribs. Here's some codeine." They called me back the next morning, and asked me to stop out. I grabbed a bus to the hospital, and didn't get the bus back for almost eight months. Quarantined, with no warning. Took meds for a year after that. Now, I'm thinkin' that maybe I'll get some more testing just to be sure.

[Gay State Conservative]

Wow,that's a bummer for sure.But with as many preventable and lethal communicable diseases we have today I say we need it.

[gaijin]

gay dudes are walking TB factories --un-PC, isn't it? You'll never hear it, anywhere else...!

[RedWhitetAndBlue]

Actually TB was never eradicated, even in the US. ("Eradicated," in epidemiological terms, means having an incidence rate of one case per million population. We've never come close to hitting that mark for TB.) The US started keeping TB statistics in 1953, and the rates have been dropping every year since, except for a brief period in the late 1980s going into the early 1990s when we had an epidemic. TB cases and rates are the lowest they've ever been in the US now. While Mexico is the leading source of TB cases from outside the US, more cases originate inside the US than are imported from Mexico. It was only a few years ago that aliens made up the majority of TB cases in the US. The leading sources of TB from outside the US are now Mexico, the Philippines, Viet Nam, India and China.

[RavenATB]

"The leading sources of TB from outside the US are now Mexico..."


Exactly. And the logical question, then, becomes "how long will it take before the US is the leading source of TB for itself...?

[RedWhitetAndBlue]

You're exactly right. Today's standard TB drug regimen--2 months of Rifampin, Isoniazid, Pyrazinamide and Ethambutol, followed by 4 months of Isoniazid and Rifampin--takes 6 months, but symptoms are gone in 2 or 3 weeks, meaning it's not easy to be diligent in taking all the drugs for the entire duration of treatment. This is especially the case considering that the drugs can create unpleasant side effects themselves. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much for the TB bacillus to build up resistance to the drugs. That's why the standard means of treating TB calls for a health worker to watch the patient take every single dose of medicine (called "directly observed therapy," or DOT)--to ensure that the treatment is administered properly and in a way that minimizes or eliminates the rise of drug resistance. Also, the last TB drug to be developed, Rifampin, came on the market 40 years ago, and pharmaceutical companies aren't exactly battling each other to come out with the newest TB drug (regardless of what "The Constant Gardener" portrays). This means that TB drugs are precious. Do a google search for XDR-TB and you'll find that we may be losing the battle against TB drug resistance, however.