Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria which most often affects lungs and is known as pulmonary TB.
Extrapulmonary TB is the TB which affects other areas of the body. (e.g. gastrointestinal TB, spine TB, liver TB,bone TB)
Transmission: It gets transmitted from one person to other by droplet formation when an infected person coughs, speaks, laughs, sings, or sneezes. One TB person can infect 10 other people when he/she coughs.
Common symptoms: Prolonged cough for more than 2 weeks (sometimes with blood), loss of appetite.,chest pain, weakness, fatigue, weight loss, fever, night sweats.
Important Tests for diagnosis : Xpert MTB, RIF Ultra and Truenat assays. Biopsy if you have Lymph node TB, Spine TB, abdominal TB and send appropriate tests.
Treatment: Tuberculosis is preventable and 100% curable if diagnosed early and treated with optimum duration of multi drug- treatment . Usually we use isoniazid, rifampin, ethambutol, pyrazinamide etc for simple TB (Sensitive TB) and treatment duration is for 6 months. For MDR TB , which doesn't respond to above drugs need multiple drug therapy like Bedaquilline , Linezolid, Clofazimine, Cycloserine, Levofloxacine and duration is 18 to 20 months. Recently a new regimen has been introduced by National TB Elimination program called BPaLM regimen. Results with this regimen are promising.
Bacillle Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine is also available for its prevention in kids.
