What Is Tuberculosis?
Tuberculosis is a disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M bovis, and M africanum. According to a recent WHO report, the number of tuberculosis cases resistant to antibiotics has increased worldwide.
In most cases, the infection with this bacterium occurs by inhaling microorganisms from droplets produced by patients with tuberculosis. Mycobacterium persists in the air for a longer period, increasing the risk of the disease spreading. Mycobacterium-like organisms are bacteria that exist in the form of slightly curved bacillus.
The germs enter the body and locate the hilarious ganglions where they multiply in the intracellular environment, causing the first stage of the disease. Intracellular multiplication of tuberculosis bacillus causes local lesions manifested as lesions of proliferative type: tubercle follicles develop, consisting of parasitized Langerhans cells, around which phagocytes are attracted by chemotactism.
Necroses also appear as a result to the toxic action of lipids, proteins and sugars in the structure of tubercle bacilli. The lesions from the primary infection are amplified by the cellular immune response that occurs after 2-3 weeks.
TB chemotherapy became possible by the discovery of streptomycin in the mid 1940s. Random clinical trials showed that administration of streptomycin in tuberculosis patients with chronic low mortality and led to healing in some cases. However, monotherapy with streptomycin was frequently associated with development of resistance to streptomycin, accompanied by treatment failure.
The Resistant Bacteria
The incidence varies on age, gender and socioeconomic status. Tuberculosis caused by the chimosensible strains is curable in all cases if it is properly treated. If left untreated, the disease can be fatal for more than half of the cases, within five years. There are also cases when the bacteria becomes resistant to common antibiotic treatment.
The number of tuberculosis cases resistant to conventional treatment increased, according to a recent report published by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO estimates that 5% of 9 million TB cases per year worldwide are resistant to conventional treatment.
Powerful antibiotic resistant TB – multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), hit Eastern Europe and certain regions of China. For the first time, WHO has reviewed the incidence of extreme forms of tuberculosis resistant to antibiotics – extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).
These forms of tuberculosis are resistant to drugs such as fluoroquinolones, which are used when conventional treatment has no effect. Approximately 40,000 new cases of XDR-TB have been reported worldwide (less than 0.5% of the 9 million cases total). These cases do not respond to any kind of treatment.
WHO officials have called for intensification of the research aimed at finding new antibiotics to fight with the new cases of XDR-TB. Mario Raviglione, director of the department STOP tuberculosis (TB) of the WHO says:” If we do not succeed to approach the problem in a serious manner, then we will not succeed in avoiding the increasing number of MDR-TB and XDR-TB cases in some parts of the world.”
Tuberculosis is typically treated with a combination of antibiotics therefore when a particular bacterium is immune to a certain type of antibiotic, another antibiotic from the combination will attack it.
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