Posted on 01/04/2013 12:28:01 AM PST by neverdem
The world is starting to win the war against tuberculosis, but drug-resistant forms pose a new threat.
If there was any doubt that tuberculosis (TB) was fighting back, it was dispelled in 2005, at the Church of Scotland Hospital in the village of Tugela Ferry, South Africa. Doctors at the hospital, in a rough, remote corner of KwaZulu-Natal province, were hardened to people dying from gunshots and AIDS. But even they were puzzled and frightened when patients with HIV who were responding well to antiretroviral drugs began dying — rapidly — from TB.
With ordinary TB, patients start to feel better after a few weeks or months on a selection of four mainstay antibiotics. But of the 542 people with TB at the hospital in 2005 and early 2006, 221 (41%) had a multi-drug-resistant (MDR) form, against which these therapies are mostly powerless. Worse, 53 of them did not even respond to the few antibiotics that form a second line of defence. Eventually, doctors had nothing left to try: all but one of the 53 died, half of them within 16 days of diagnosis. It was the first major outbreak of what became known as extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB — and a wake-up call to the world that TB had taken a turn for the worse1.
In the early 1980s, TB cases had dropped to such low rates that Western policy-makers frequently talked of eradication of the disease. Then came...
--snip--
Worldwide, TB is now the leading cause of death among people with HIV.
The resurgence of ordinary TB set the stage for drug-resistant forms. Resistance develops when people do not stick to their drug regimens — which typically last six months for drug-sensitive TB and 20 months for MDR-TB — allowing naturally occurring resistant mutants to grow and evolve...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
“Is there a vaccine for TB?”
From my understanding, no. In recent years, my kids have been tested for TB almost every time they have a well check. Our pediatrician explained that since so many “immigrants” come to the U.S. and are in our area (MD)... the rise of TB has been seen. Not only can this be passed at schools but fast food restaurants, malls, pretty much everywhere. I asked, “why can’t we vaccinate them?” Answer: no vaccine for TB (at least this is what I’e been told)
Yes, but they need a better one. Go back to the source. Here's an excerpt:
"The Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine, first used in the 1920s, helped. But BCG is now effective mainly against childhood TB, which is not infectious, rather than the adult form."
Cheers!
Then there are the foreign guests their putative baby-daddy brings into their home ~ definitely a potential TB vector there ~ particularly the state dinners!,
I doubt that crowd is worried about it yet
Self imposed physical isolation is the only way to get through these Great Plagues ~
Now that would be effin' IRONIC.
NO Cheers, unfortunately.
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/statistics/TBTrends.htmThis is the latest CDC annual report ~ and it shows TB declining in the US, but it still exists. Notice that Washington DC is one of the hotspots ~ as expected. Note, this has nothing to do with resistant forms, particularly a hypothetical extra fast resistant form that could sweep through non-TB resistant populations like ‘ ....... ‘ through a goose! Pay close attention to current rates per census group. Freepers will survive!
That was a consequence of the use of standard quarantine rules developed over the previous thousand years or so.
Many of us here are old enough to remember the way polio was first treated ~ before Salk ~ the public swimming pools were closed. Chillun' did not attend large youth camps. If one kid in your neighborhood or social circle got infected you let others know, and reduced your hectic social schedule.
Democrats like to hold JFK out as some sort of cultural exemplar ~ aside from his notorious sexual misadventures, he had had all his WWII shots, and his Senator shots, and whatever other shots ~ as had most of that crowd, and they were no longer spreading TB and several other diseases.
He still took a risk when he depended on the 'protective umbrella' theory that was just then aborning in the minds of epidemiologists ~ to wit; you don't need to make everyone immune ~ if you simply have 3/4 of them immune, you break up the ability of the virus or bacteria to find hosts suitable for further procreation. Or, alternatively, that if you have innoculated 3/4 of them, the others will catch protective viral types from them!
When drug resistant viruses or bacteria with further immunity to vaccines come along, it's like someone threw fresh meat to a lion!
The day some one of the top echelon in the Obama regime comes down with drug resistant TB, you might never see any more state dinners ~ and attendance at foreign symposia might become restricted ~ fur sure, only a handful of organizationally isolated Obamistas ~ like Susan Rice ~ will be going around the UN.
I'd watch for those reactions ~ we may actually have seen some.
Then there's Chavez ~ fur shur he's had his guts removed but it's a respiratory problem that's got him down and he was just up and speaking the other day. Now that old reprobate is lying on his back intubated and respirated, and unable to absorb oxygem.
Is that symptomatic of cancer or is that TB, or possibly drug resistant pneumonia?
To a democrat death is no impediment to further voting
I consider live garlic to be one of the four food groups, so hopefully the nasties hiss and scream and poof into a puff of smoke as soon as they try to get in my bloodstream...there’s so much garlic juice in my blood all my corpuscles have long bushy mustaches ;^)
Can't say. Since he had cancer, his immune system wasn't up to snuff. Thanks for the link, muawiyah. Happy New Year!
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