A paper in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal warns that the first cases of "totally drug-resistant" tuberculosis have been found in South Africa and that the disease is "virtually untreatable." Like other bacterial diseases, tuberculosis has been evolving to fend off effective antibiotics. Totally drug-resistant tuberculosis (TDR) has previously been found in India, Iran, and Italy, but appears to be most prevalent in South Africa.
Drug resistance to TB is also caused by only partial treatment. Karin Weyer, the coordinator of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB department on drug resistance, says, "The most important aspect of this is that we get the patient cured the first time around. Every time a patient has to get treated again, you run the risk of amplifying resistance."While outbreaks of diseases are eventually contained, the costs are extraordinary.
Because patients are not usually tested for a particular strain of tuberculosis, it is unclear how widespread TDR is. Major health organizations have yet to even define the parameters necessary for a case of tuberculosis to be considered TDR. Researches are working on improving at identifying TDR so doctors know what they are up against when they see a highly resistant strain of TB. It is easy to tell if a strain is resistant to the “first line” of TB drugs, but highly resistant forms of bacteria are much more difficult to detect (Koebler 3).
NOS Themes:
Discoveries in science are happening regularly, and new applications are constantly being found.
Science is collaborative; five different countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have agreed to work together to fight the epidemic of drug resistance in TB)
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/02/11/doctors-struggling-totally-drug-resistant-tuberculosis-south-africa?page=2
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324900204578282241211725124.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
Phoebe Elliott hour 3
Many years ago, we were scared of tuberculosis because we didn't have a cure for it, and people would die from it. Now, this will be brought up again. This makes me wonder where will it spread to next? What other diseases are going to become drug-resistant?
ReplyDeleteAccording to an article from www.ucsf.edu, South American health care seems to be worsening. Some people there cannot seek treatment for a minor ailment, which could escalate into a disease that may kill them. Now with this new drug-resistant tuberculosis striking especially hard there, more and more people will be getting sick and their death rate will drastically increase.
With the amount of travel people do these days, I wonder how long it will be until this disease is a problem in the US, and other wealthy countries, again. What are we going to do about it? What are our scientists going to find?