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Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, [7] is a contagious disease usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) bacteria. [1] Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. [1]
As such, a person diagnosed with latent TB can safely assume that, even after treatment, they will carry the bacteria – likely for the rest of their lives. Furthermore, "It has been estimated that up to one-third of the world's population is infected with M. tuberculosis , and this population is an important reservoir for disease reactivation."
The risk of developing TB is estimated to be between 20 and 37 times greater in people living with HIV than among those without HIV infection. TB is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among people living with HIV. [13] In 2009, there were 9.4 million new cases of TB, of which 1.2 (13%) million were among people living with HIV.
[4] [2] In severe cases, people may experience hospitalizations and death related to respiratory causes. [2] There is no accepted diagnosis criteria for PTLD, and existing research does not use a clearly defined study population. [7] [8]
Ultimately, though, TB can avoid the mucus traps and make its way to the deep airways and alveoli where we have macrophages which eat up foreign cells, digest, and destroy them. With TB, they recognize foreign proteins on their cell surface, and phagocytize them, or essentially package them into a space called a phagosome.
These people can in turn infect other people with MDR-TB. [5] [8] MDR-TB caused an estimated 600,000 new TB cases and 240,000 deaths in 2016 and MDR-TB accounts for 4.1% of all new TB cases and 19% of previously treated cases worldwide. [13] Globally, most MDR-TB cases occur in South America, Southern Africa, India, China, and the former Soviet ...
Human infectious diseases may be characterized by their case fatality rate (CFR), the proportion of people diagnosed with a disease who die from it (cf. mortality rate).It should not be confused with the infection fatality rate (IFR), the estimated proportion of people infected by a disease-causing agent, including asymptomatic and undiagnosed infections, who die from the disease.
Prospects for tuberculosis control and elimination in a hypothetical high-burden country, starting in 2015. Tuberculosis has been a curable illness since the 1940s when the first drugs became available, although multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant TB present an increasing challenge. [5]