Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Essay

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Caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, about 9.9 million people were affected by tuberculosis (TB) globally in 2012 with 1.3 million affected resulting in death (World Health Organization [WHO], 2014). Slow growing, Mycobacterium tuberculosis originated from environmental mycobacteria (Delogu, Sali, & Fadda, 2013). These strains evolved with increased virulence and ability to transmit making it responsible for the cases infecting human kind.
This disease was once thought to have spread only from animals to humans thousands of years ago, but has since been discovered that ancient Egyptian mummies possessed distinct scars of the disease (Battle, 2009). Practically nonexistent in the mind of the population, the Mycobacterium tuberculosis came back to light when HIV became an epidemic (Battle, 2009). This is because persons with HIV are more likely to become sick with tuberculosis (CDC, 2012). Also persons with HIV infection can progress latent TB disease to active TB disease (CDC, 2012). Persons infected with TB need only to sneeze, cough, or spit to leave droplets in...

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