The Long Road to End Tuberculosis

November 11, 2024 9:48 PM

The vaccine and antibiotics available to treat tuberculosis have curbed cases, but more innovations are needed to halt its spread and counteract drug resistance.
posted by ShooBoo (11 comments total)

Author, vlogger, and sockmonger John Green gives a crash course on Tuberculosis: The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time
posted by otherchaz at 3:58 AM on November 12 [1 favorite]

The last frontier: how to overcome the drug resistance of the human mind.
posted by Dashy at 4:41 AM on November 12 [2 favorites]

Very interesting - thanks, ShooBoo! I worked in TB research for a few years, but there's a lot of interesting detail in here that I hadn't heard before, like the diverging lineages used in the BCG vaccine. I was a bit confused by the lack of emphasis on diagnostics, because reliably identifying TB infection and whether it is latent or active is a crucial part of the drug resistance question, but the author wrote that article in the same issue.
posted by McBearclaw at 7:23 AM on November 12 [2 favorites]

interesting tb fact -- i had to have a negative tb test to apply for permanent residency in canada in 2003. it's that serious a deal. no other disease tests, though there was a general physical
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:46 AM on November 12 [4 favorites]

Yay for this!
Boo for the antivaxxers and the no germ theories spreading online which has allowed the resurgence of diseases like measles, whooping cough, and polio.
posted by Oh_Bobloblaw at 8:16 AM on November 12 [3 favorites]

→ i had to have a negative tb test to apply for permanent residency in canada in 2003

Likewise for us a couple of years before. Though having a BCG test site scar on my left arm (which still itches sometimes, 40+ years after the test) should have done the job
posted by scruss at 9:58 AM on November 12 [1 favorite]

I've spent the last 15 years low-key convinced that it's not another flu-like SARS, MERS, COVID, that'll do us in, but multiple strains of drug resistant TB, cultivated in prisons of places like Russia and spread by world-travelers and anti-vaxxers.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 10:52 AM on November 12

My father was invalided out of the Royal Navy in around 1947, with spinal TB and sent to a large TB sanatorium in Scotland. There was no real treatment to control the infection in those days, so after surgery to remove the damaged vertebrae, he spent 18 months on his back in bed with a plaster cast from armpits to hips. There were patients who had been there for years all getting supportive treatment but nothing to effectively control the infection. Then effective antibiotics became available and the hospital emptied out within months. By the time he left the place was being converted to a children's hospital. He got TB again in the 60s, this time in his kidneys and was treated as an out patient, and cured in about a year. Antibiotics were a genuine miracle then, and still are now. It makes me livid to think that could be lost.

Incidentally, both my brother and I had positive BCG tests as children despite never being infected.
posted by Fuchsoid at 2:35 PM on November 12 [3 favorites]

multiple strains of drug resistant TB, cultivated in prisons of places like Russia

You don't have to bring in the big bad Russian boogeyman here; TB is rampant in the US prison system as well, and people incarcerated in the US quite often don't get any better medical care than people incarcerated in Russia.
posted by adrienneleigh at 8:32 PM on November 13 [1 favorite]

→ a large TB sanatorium in Scotland

Mearnskirk? I only ask because I grew up in the neighbourhood. The huge hospital grounds are only slowly being redeveloped. Even in the 1970s, there were still wards for 'lifers': men (seemingly all men) who'd been in for decades. I was too young to understand what they were in for
posted by scruss at 6:47 PM on November 14

You don't have to bring in the big bad Russian boogeyman here; TB is rampant in the US prison system as well, and people incarcerated in the US quite often don't get any better medical care than people incarcerated in Russia.

This is absolutely one of the (many) things I worry about with Trump’s immigration detention plans. I find it highly unlike that the incoming administration will worry that much about ensuring the health and well-being of people in their detention camps, especially when that would cost money.
posted by eviemath at 1:26 PM on November 15 [2 favorites]