It is an infectious disease caused by one or more strain of mycobacteria, mainly mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis infects the lungs causing many respiratory symptoms and then it causes other systemic symptoms all over the body that we will discuss later in the symptoms sections. Most of the infections are asymptomatic while only one tenth of which is transformed to active infection which is mostly lethal if not treated properly.
Signs and Symptoms
Symptoms are classified into respiratory symptoms, where the patient suffers from severe cough, high rate of sputum production, appearance of blood in sputum and chest pain. If it invades the pulmonary artery then excessive bleeding may occur. Other symptoms are systemic extra pulmonary symptoms including fever, excessive sweating at night and weight loss. All these signs and symptoms mentioned is indicative and characteristic for tuberculosis.
Causes
It is a disease caused by mycobacterium tuberculosis which is an aerobic immobile bacillus. It is transmitted when person become in contact with saliva, sputum of an infected person, or even upon breathing air near the patient who is all the time coughing and sneezing.
Risk factors
Factors that make someone more susceptible to the infection of tuberculosis include HIV which decreases the overall immunity of the person leading to be infected easily. Other highly common risk factors include bad health care, overcrowding and malnutrition so that this disease is called the disease of poverty as it is usually highly spread in poor countries where there is no good health care providers and there are many bad habits concerning hygiene and health care. Smoking is a common risk factor. Also people with diseases like diabetes mellitus and chronic pulmonary infections are more susceptible to tuberculosis.
Diagnosis
Depending only on the characteristic signs and symptoms is not enough. Chest x-ray showing numerous dark lesions and doing sputum cultures are the first steps for evaluation of the disease. Sputum and blood cultures are always so difficult to obtain result from due to the slow growth rate of the bacillus that may delay the culture to two to four weeks.
Prevention
This is mainly done by vaccination of infants and using enhancing doses of the vaccine in young ages. The most commonly used vaccine is bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine. It prevent the direct infection in children but the immunity induced by this vaccine is lost after about 10 years so an enhancing dose must be administered.
Treatment
This infectious disease can’t be easily treated due to the high resistant membrane the bacillus owns and so it is so difficult to penetrate this membrane with the antibiotics usually used. The most commonly used effective antibiotics used are rifampicin and isoniazid. Usually a combination of two antibiotics is used to prevent the development of resistant strains of the bacteria. The treatment course may last for several months through which administration of the antibiotic combination is administered and the prognosis is observed.
Finally I would like to say that tuberculosis nowadays is not a disease of high concern except in poor and low income countries, but even these have overcame the problem by proper vaccination and good health advice announcements on the media and the press.
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