Posted on 11/07/2008 10:59:04 PM PST by neverdem
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 one second-line injectable drug were classified as having XDR-TB.
In the study, more than half the XDR-TB patients died within seven years, a rate similar to that of deaths from untreated TB in South India, the researchers said.
"[Having] XDR-TB was the strongest predictor of both all-cause and TB-related mortality, and survival curves showed higher cumulative mortality among patients with XDR-TB than in other patients with MDR-TB," study principal investigator Dr. Tae Sun Shim, an associate professor at Asan Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea, said in an American Thoracic Society news release.
The researchers found that XDR-TB patients tended to be significantly older than MDR-TB patients, and more likely to have been treated multiple times for tuberculosis in the past.
Based on their findings, the researchers classified MDR-TB as "a major threat to public health" to South Korea, where new tuberculosis cases rose from 1.6 percent to 2.7 percent between 1994 and 2004.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about tuberculosis.
SOURCE: American Thoracic Society, news release, Nov. 6, 2008
yeah we had irradicated TB a while back. the immigration here has brought a stronger strain in that can’t be fought with the run of the mill antibiotic.
HMMM. Always on the look out to be on the lookout and protect myself and my loved ones. ;-) Thanks for posting.
If you test positive for TB via a skin test, you are forced to take the regiment of drugs or face imprisonment, regardless of whether you have “active” or “inactive” TB.
I was in high school when I had a positive skin test, and was diagnosed with inactive TB (meaning I had no symptons, other than a reaction to the little skin test they do). We were late picking up my prescription one time (Quite honestly, I had forgotten it) and you should have heard the phone calls we received from the doctor’s office, as well as the letter from the state health department.
I’m quite certain that stuffing everyone full of these drugs has played a role in a drug resistant strain of TB cropping up.
That’s just my uneducated opinion though. I can’t prove it and don’t have the wherewithall to do extensive research.
Every time someone coughs near me in public I go into my Count Dracula routine covering my mouth and face.
No surprise. Bizarre strains of TB have been brewing out there since HIV became prevalent. Remember the movie ‘Andromeda Strain’? Mutating viruses are impossible to nail down.
Michael Savage has been warning about this for about 15 years now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.