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An essay on tuberculosis
Tuberculosis history
An essay on tuberculosis
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Tuberculosis a disease that is caused by a bacteria which mostly targets the lungs. This is called pulmonary tuberculosis. This disease is transferred through the air and is very contagious. It is mostly spread by coughing and sneezing. Symptoms depend on what part of the body has been affected, but sweating throughout the night and weight loss are very common in all forms of tuberculosis. Examples such as a stubborn cough, coughing up blood and shortness of breath are those of a victim of pulmonary tuberculosis. Most people who are exposed to tuberculosis never feel the symptoms because the bacteria can live in places that are not active throughout the body, but if the immune system fails or becomes weak, examples would include people with HIV or elderly adults, tuberculosis bacteria can become active again. Damage to the lung tissue can occur over time, and can even be irreversible after a point.
The History of Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) was once considered a common disease. It was almost eliminated with the help of newly developed antibiotics and drugs around the 1950s, but the disease has reappeared in powerful new ways. Some ways include multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. In today’s time, these dangerous forms of the disease, resistant to some of the commonly used drug treatments because they are new, have created a public health crisis in many large cities worldwide. If you have tuberculosis you must seek medical treatment as soon as you can to avoid consequences.
How to treat Tuberculosis?
The action required to treat tuberculosis is long and difficult, which requires patients to take different antibiotics for at least six months. Drug resistant tuberculosis treatment is even w...
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...ople, and those with certain medical conditions such as diabetes, certain types of cancer, and being underweight are all more likely to get this disease. One way to prevent getting tuberculosis is by getting a TB shot before you are diagnosed. Also, try to avoid enclosed rooms with anyone who has recently been diagnosed with tuberculosis until he or she has been treated for at least 2 weeks. This could result in the spread of the disease and you could end up infecting other people. One way to prevent spread would be to use protective masks, such as face masks, if you work in any setting that cares for people who have untreated and contagious TB. If you live with someone who is currently suffering with tuberculosis, encourage them to follow all of their orders and to finish all of their medicine. This gives them the best opportunity to get better and stop the spread.
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Infectious Disease – The Never-ending Threat). It is acquired by inhalation and is spreadable. The City of Toronto in accordance with Toronto Public Health have in place different specialty teams in regards to Tuberculosis (TB) who work together to provide support for individuals with TB as well as their families and to help prevent the spread of TB in Toronto (City of Toronto). Specifically, Toronto Public Health has a designated homeless and corrections team who manage TB disease and infection within the homeless/under-housed and corrections populations. Within this program, they use many environmental guidelines to access and diminish in the
Drug resistance in mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) has become a severe global health threat. The fight against TB is now facing major challenges due to the appearance of Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and more recently, the virtually untreatable Extensively Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB). MDR-TB are strains that are resistant to both top first-line drugs, Isoniazid and Rifampin, while XDR-TB are MDR-TB strains that are also resistant to any fluoroquinolone and one or more of 3 injectable drugs. With this new resistance, there emerges a great need to find new drugs that are as effective, yet bypass the problem of resistance. One method of research is to find new vulnerabilities of tuberculosis to use as new target sites of drugs. This method is highly expensive (Scheffler, Colmer, Tynan, Demain, & Gullo, 2013), and requires intense and lengthy research just to implicate the new target site. An alternative is to develop new drugs that work on the same already known target as the first-line drugs, but by a different mechanism, thereby bypassing the resistance of the TB to the drug.
Tuberculosis or TB is an airborn infection caused by inhaled droplets that contain mycobacterium tuberculosis. When infected, the body will initiate a cell-mediated hypersensitivity response which leads to formation of lesion or cavity and positive reaction to tuberculin skin test (Kaufman, 2011). People who have been infected with mycobacteria will have a positive skin test, but only ones who have active TB will show signs and symtoms. Basic signs and symptoms include low grade fever, cough with hemoptysis, and tachypnea. They may also show pleuristic chest pain, dyspnea, progressive weight loss, fatigue and malaise (Porth, 2011).
Tuberculosis has many forms that can invade the body. Many cures involve drugs and multiple combinations of the drugs. Drugs are used in combinations because tuberculosis can travel to different parts of the body. One of the causes for the spread of tuberculosis around the world is the emergence drug- resistance strain. Tuberculosis can become resistant to most, if not all, of the drugs that are used to treat tuberculosis.
Hepatitis B is a DNA viral infection that causes damage and inflammation to the liver. It was first discovered in 1965 by Dr. Baruch Blumberg. The HBV virus is very contagious and is even thought to be the most serious form of viral hepatitis and the most common viral infection on Earth. “HBV is 100 times more infectious than HIV.” (Green, 2002, pg. 7) The virus can survive for about one week outside the body on a dry surface. According to Green (2002, pg. 7), “One in twenty Americans has been infected with the virus at some point in their lives.” Between the ages of 15-39 is when 75% of new HBV infections occur, according to Green (2002, pg.8).
Education can be a powerful weapon in fighting tuberculosis in the United States also around the world. Today, it is encouraging how so many people know how TB contracts human and what cause drug resistant effects among those who are under TB treatment.
Chronic HBV is developed when HBV infection dose not result in immunization and is defined as existence of HbsAG in the body for more than six months [1]. Progression from acute HBV to chronic HBV is highly influenced by the age at infection and is a common state for those infected at...
Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has presented many problems in our society, including an increased chance of fatality due to infections that could have otherwise been treated with success. Antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections, but overexposure to these drugs give the bacteria more opportunities to mutate, forming resistant strains. Through natural selection, those few mutated bacteria are able to survive treatments of antibiotics and then pass on their genes to other bacterial cells through lateral gene transfer (Zhaxybayeva, 2011). Once resistance builds in one patient, it is possible for the strain to be transmitted to others through improper hygiene and failure to isolate patients in hospitals.
Since antibiotics, such as penicillin, became widely available in the 1940s, they have been called miracle drugs. They have been able to eliminate bacteria without significantly harming the other cells of the host. Now with each passing year, bacteria that are immune to antibiotics have become more and more common. This turn of events presents us with an alarming problem. Strains of bacteria that are resistant to all prescribed antibiotics are beginning to appear. As a result, diseases such as tuberculosis and penicillin-resistant gonorrhea are reemerging on a worldwide scale (1).
Tuberculosis is an air-borne disease, hence, it can be passed from an infected person to a healthy individual through coughing, sneezing and other salivary secretions. Tuberculosis is caused by the transfer of Mycobacteriun Tuberculosis (M. Tuberculosis) also known as Tubercle Bacillus, a small particle of 1-5 microns in diameter, due to the small size, when an infected person sneezes or coughs, about 3,000 particles are expelled. M. Tuberculosis responsible for tuberculosis is able to stay in the air for a long period of time (about 6hoursAnother way of acquiring Tuberculosis is by drinking unpasteurized milk, milk straight from cow, although this is not a common mode of transmission, it can be found in rural areas. Ingestion of contaminated cow milk transmits Mycobacterium Bovis, the animal form which is still potent enough to cause tuberculosis in humans. ). Tuberculosis transmission is affected by exposure, socioeconomic status of person, proximity, immune status of uninfected individual (%&&%&? CDC).
Medical science and pharmaceutical researchers need to vigorously investigate the many factors contributing to the decline in antibiotic efficacy which will then empower them to research and develop a new generation of antibiotic therapies. Aligned with this is the responsibility of each individual to manage their health and expectations with regard to treatment. For example, individuals could adopt better ways of maintaining their immune systems by means of a healthy diet and exercise.
Tuberculosis is transmitted by inhalation of aerosols containing the tubercle bacilli. The required inoculum size for infection is usually high, but easily occurs with exposure to a patient who is currently infected. The products of dried aerosols, droplet nuclei, are particularly infectious because they remain in the air for an extended time, and upon inhalation easily move to the alveoli. The severe damage related to infection is caused by the reaction of the host. The tuberculosis infection has two phases, primary and secondary.
Tuberculosis has plagued mankind for a long time. This disease, which was previously believed to be eradicated, has once again shown up and begun attacking the lives of many humans. Tuberculosis infects a third of the population and kills a fraction of them. Many approaches have been used including different varieties of infection control, bodily defenses, and treatments to try to protect humans from tuberculosis. The best way to prevent tuberculosis infections is to contain the source of tuberculosis. The most common source of tuberculosis infection is from infected humans. By diagnosing, containing, and treating people with latent tuberculosis before they get active, contagious tuberculosis, tuberculosis can be quickly contained. Once someone has been diagnosed with TB, they should be placed under isolation.
Researchers have also identified a list of other factors associated with TB transmission such as environmental, organism and host factors, but these unfortunately, are outside the scope of the present paper. 16
Syphilis is a sexually transmitting infection caused by Treonema pallidum, a gram negative, and anaerobic spirochete bacteria 1. Syphilis is thought to have been brought to Europe by Columbus and his sailors in the 1500’s 1. The disease is characterized by four different stages with varying symptoms depending on the stage that the disease is in1. Often syphilis is presented with another sexually transmitted infection such as chlamydia. Public education regarding safe sex is important for the prevention of this sexually transmitted infection.