What is Tuberculosis?
Tuberculosis is a common infectious disease in the lungs caused by tubercle bacilli. This bacteria/microbe, mycobacterium tuberculosis, needs a lot of oxygen to survive therefore, it settles in a human's lung, which affects the immune system (lymphatic system), circulatory system, and the nervous system. Tuberculosis is classified into two categories, latent and active. During latency, there are no signs of the disease at all except a positive TB skin test, which is not contagious. However during active TB, thats when people are very infectious, with every cough, shout, or breath, that individual becomes danger to the public. The sicker someone is with active TB, there are greater number of microbes in his or her body.History:
Back then, this disease was called the consumption because it consumed a majority of the people.
Experts in the 19th century believed that TB was a hereditary disease because a person infected, infected everyone surrounding him/her. However, Dr. Koch, a Nobel Prize winner for medicine denied this theory and said it is an infectious disease.
Is Tuberculosis contagious?
Yes! It is very contagious. Tuberculosis is an easily acquired infection, it is stated that each time someone with tuberculosis coughs, sneezes, or even yells, he expels droplets of saliva, phlegm, and tuberculosis bacilli into the air, which, if the droplets were small, it can linger and float in the air with tiny germs in it until another warm body inhales it, which can be up to several hours.
- A study showed that coughing is the most efficient means of spreading respiratory infections.
Is it curable or no?
Tuberculosis can be treated with antibiotics and in most cases, it can be cured.
Who has it?
This disease is mostly common in people between the ages of 18 - 55.
The stages:
Inhale of the bacteria, the bacteria reaches the air sacs of the lung.
In the alveoli, the infection of tuberculosis begins.
The bacterias multiply until macrophages (white blood cells, whose role is to kill microbes and viruses) die.
These bacterias use the macrophages to reproduce which causes the tubercle to grow.
The growing tubercle takes over bronchus, destroying lung tissues and invading the arterioles and arteries surrounding the lung. This stage leads to hemoptysis, which is when the individual who is infected starts coughing up blood.
Symptoms:
Intense sweating, raging fever, fatigue, difficult standing upright, headaches, and coughing.
Statistics:
- It is stated that 2 billion of the planet's 6 billion people are infected with latent form of tuberculosis.
- In the United States, 10 to 15 million are infected and out of those at least 10% of them will go on to develop the active form of tuberculosis.
- Every year, about 3 million people die of tuberculosis, making it the leading infectious cause of death in the world.
- Every year public health officials across the globe diagnose more than 8 million active cases of TB.
The first picture is of a normal person, without tuberculosis. The second picture is of a person infected with tuberculosis. You can see that there's huge gap in the middle. It is during the stage where the tubercle bacterias have destroyed parts of the lung.
