Tuberculosis CDC
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/faqs/default.htm
Posted: March 17th, 2009 under Tuberculosis.
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Tuberculosis
Bacteria traverse hidden pathways to escape immune system
A new study shows that there is a secret pathway used by disease-causing bacteria to escape the host immune system and survive within the cells meant to kill them.
This breakthrough research may lead to new treatments and vaccines for tuberculosis (TB) and certain other chronic bacterial and parasitic infections.
The research is the work of the laboratories headed by Peter Murray, Ph.D., at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and Thomas Wynn, Ph.D., of the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Clearing the body of disease-causing bacteria is the job of specialized white blood cells called macrophages.
The word “macrophage” means “big eater” in Latin and that is just what these cells do–they chomp up cell debris, infected cells and disease-causing bacteria found.
However, some harmful bacteria, known as intracellular pathogens, live inside cells and can even survive and replicate within macrophages.
“The bacteria designed to live inside the cell are highly adapted to their environment,” says Dr. Murray.
– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director
Image courtesy of McGill University. 
Posted: November 3rd, 2008 under Developing Diseases, Diseases, Impaired Immunity, Tuberculosis.
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Research shows that tuberculosis may be 9,000 years old
A new study shows that tuberculosis may be even older than previously believed. Researchers once thought that TB came from the infected milk of cattle at a time when humans first started domesticating animals around six thousand years go.
The discovery of two older victims - a mother and a baby - may prove that the human strain existed before its bovine equivalent.
The findings were reported in the Public Library of Science One Journal. The research gives scientists more information with which to trace the route of the disease which still kills thousands of people every year.
“What this shows is that it was not animals that infected humans, it was humans infecting humans,” said Dr. Helen Donoghue, from the University of London. “This suggests that it was the coming together of humans into settlements rather than the domestication of animals that led to the disease spreading.”
The mother and baby were discovered underwater in the remains of a Neolithic village, now submerged by the sea off the coast of Haifa, in Israel.
Discovery of this ancient DNA confirmed the latest theory that bovine TB evolved later than human TB, the scientists reported.
Dr. Donoghue added: “What is fascinating is that the infecting organism is definitely the human strain of tuberculosis, in contrast to the original theory that human TB evolved from bovine TB after animal domestication.”
– by Gene J. Koprowski, Editorial Director
Posted: October 15th, 2008 under Diseases, Tuberculosis.
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‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ No he’s not. Sen. Obama’s brother, George, faces cholera, malaria every day, alone
“That spirit of looking out for one another, that core value that says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper,’ that spirit is most evident during times of great tragedy. It’s most evident during times of great hardship, it’s most when natural disasters strike. We all understand that we have to come together.”
– Sen. Barack Hussein Obama (D-Ill.) on the campaign trail, Sept. 2, 2008
Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) frequently claims on the hustings, as part of his campaign for the presidency, that he would like to usher in a new era of “change” where Americans would indeed be their “brother’s keeper.” But the multi-millionaire author of the best-seller Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Random House) does not live by his own professed ethos. His own half-brother lives in squalor in a hovel in Nairobi, Kenya. Senator Obama does nothing to help the 26-year-old man, who lives a dissolute life, where his health and welfare are seriously threatened every day.
The conditions his brother lives in are worse than those on the south side of Chicago, where Obama was a community agitator for the radical Saul Alinsky organization during the late 1980s. Much worse. Â
The Kenyan government has not lent a helping hand to Senator Obama’s younger brother, George, either, even though it professes to have a policy to help the poor and sick there.
Infection Protection & Control’s Nairobi, Kenya Correspondent David James interviewed George Obama, the presidential candidate’s brother, last week.
Here is his story:
George Hussein Obama, lives in a tiny single room in a sprawling ghetto in Nairobi, known as Huruma. When I visited, I noticed that his room stinks of a foul stench of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana smoke. The neighborhood is fetid and teeming with prostitutes. The most common food sold in the streets in this neighborhood is rotting fish. The fish is exposed to all sorts of disease; hordes of flies and other parasites are able to feed on it before it is sold to Obama and his neighbors. These living conditions put Obama’s brother in grave danger of contracting a host of deadly infections including: salmonella, listeria, malaria, HIV/AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis and Chlamydia, asthma, and tuberculosis, Dr. Kimotho, a medical doctor in Kenya’s leading hospital, Nairobi Hospital, tells Infection Protection. The environment also is conducive to “cancer,” Dr. Kimotho says.
Senator Obama’s brother languishes here, while senator Obama lives comfortably in a mansion in Chicago near the prestigious University of Chicago, and makes about $2 million annually from book royalty revenues and his $160,000 senate salary.
According to George Obama, who shares the same biological father with Barack, and the same middle name, Hussein, and last name, Obama, he was born in this environment of depravation and ill-health, has never left it, and has “not received any help from my brother.”
Cases of cholera and typhoid have also sometimes been reported in George Obama’s neighborhood. According to George Obama, he doesn’t “worry” much about his health. He really has little choice in the matter. He lives reclusively, and begs for money from journalists, who come to interview him. However, in a friendly, familial spirit, he supports his brother’s presidential ambitions and hopes to meet him soon.
During the interview with Infection Protection, the younger Obama sported a black baseball cap with the “Obama for president” logo. Kenya’s Luo tribal community - Obama’s ancestral clan - is also excited about the presidential ambitions of Sen. Obama. Clan members who own taxis have festooned them with laudatory images of Sen. Obama, as if he is some sort of pagan god. Obama’s brother is not the only member of his family who still lives in Africa. In rural Kisumu where senator Obama’s grandmother lives, the already-high rates of HIV/AIDS have recently increased. Diseases like cholera and typhoid have also been prevalent there. I asked if Sen. Obama offers him financial assistance, but George confessed that “Obama has not offered me any financial help, nor my aunt who I live with.”
He is skeptical whether his multi-millionaire brother will rescue him from his current abject poverty. George lives next to a “twilight girls den,” Â a brothel, located in an area with poor drainage, and even worse sanitation.
Infection protection measures for these public health hazards should include: proper sanitation, proper food handling, public health education and legitimate housing, rather than the shanties that dot the streets.
No effective government measures have been implemented, however.
The Kenyan government issued a new policy to adopt male circumcision as a standard HIV prevention strategy, Kenya’s Nation newspaper reported just last spring. The Policy on Male Circumcision in Kenya 2008 calls for the procedure to be provided to all willing males. The decision to adopt circumcision as an HIV intervention follows reports showing that male circumcision can significantly lower risk for HIV, the Nation reports.
Kenyan health workers, meantime, are continuing to prescribe non-recommended antimalarial drugs that cause drug resistance because new prescribing policies have been poorly implemented, according to a recent study.
The study, led by Beatrice Wasunna – a researcher at the Kenya Medical Research Institute-Wellcome Trust Research Programme – was published in Malaria Journal in February of this year.
The Kenyan government introduced the WHO-recommended artemisinin based combination therapy (ACT) of artemether-lumefantrine (AL) for uncomplicated malaria treatment in 2006, after the malaria parasite was found to have developed resistance for the commonly used sulphur-based drugs.
Sen. Obama, during last week’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, offered yet more lofty rhetoric about health care. He promised that he would “eliminate” malaria from Africa by 2015. Many are skeptical this will happen due to the high rates of malaria infection throughout the continent.
Sen. Obama’s campaign, headquarted in Chicago, would not comment when asked, three times, for a quote for this story about his forsaken sibling by Infection Protection.
As Hillary Clinton said during the Democratic primaries this past year, Sen. Obama offers words, while others offer actions.
Though Sen. Obama promises “change,” we can probably expect more of the same characteristically evasive and elusive behavior from him for the rest of the campaign against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican nominee for president.
As Obama himself has said, to him it is his beautiful words that matter most.  “I want to wake up and know that every single American has health care when they need it, that every senior has prescription drugs they can afford, and that no parents are going to bed at night worrying about how they’ll afford medicine for a sick child. That’s the future we can build together. That’s the choice you’ll have this fall. And that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America,” said Barack Obama, on the campaign trail on June 5, 2008, the very week he clinched the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
– by David James, Nairobi, Kenya Correspondent
– Editing by Chris Wright, Gene J. Koprowski, Nancy Bruening
Barack Hussein Obama’s younger brother, George Hussein Obama (c), along with Infection Protection Nairobi, Kenya Correspondent David James (r) and an unidentified female friend.
Typical fare — insect-infested fish — available for dining in George Hussein Obama’s neighborhood.Â
Photos by Infection Protection & Control (Copyright 2008).
Posted: October 1st, 2008 under Cancer, Cholera, Developing Diseases, Diseases, HIV, Impaired Immunity, Listeria, Malaria, Salmonella, Tuberculosis.
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Deadly strain of extensively drug-resistant TB spreading in Namibia
A total of eight cases of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) have been confirmed in Namibia by international health experts.
XDR, the worst form of TB, has quite limited treatment options, according to Health Minister Dr. Richard Kamwi. A team of physicians from South Africa and the World Health Organisation was in the African country this week to assess the situation. The team presented their most recent report yesterday.
“We will do everything possible to wipe it out,” Kamwi told reporters during a briefing in Windhoek.
Five women and three men between the ages of 29 and 45 have been isolated at Oshakati, Walvis Bay, Katima Mulilo, Okahao, Onandjokwe, and Outapi as the Ministry of Health and its partners have intensified efforts to curtail the disease.
Relatives have little or no access to the patients, as the disease is regarded as a “threat to public health.”
XDR-TB is a severe form of tuberculosis and must be treated in a hospital in order to carefully monitor treatment and ensure that the highly resistant strain does not spread.
TB can generally be treated with a course of four standard, or first-line, anti-TB drugs.
However, doctors said, if the drugs are misused or mismanaged, multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) develops and later progresses to extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).
Kamwi said XDR was “very difficult to cure” but “not completely impossible, since some very limited treatment options remain.”
The government has started buying the medicine in large amounts and infection control measures in all TB wards of hospitals will be strengthened over the coming weeks.
“The public will notice some stringent measures of infection control in our health institutions to prevent the spread of the more serious forms of TB,” he said.
– by Gene J. Koprowski, MA, Editorial Director
XDR-TB threatening Namibia.
Posted: May 16th, 2008 under Diseases, Tuberculosis.
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HIV targets same cells the body needs to fight off TB infection
Scientists are working to help doctors in parts of Asia where tuberculosis (TB) and HIV have reached epidemic proportions, as they note that cells targeted by HIV infection are the same cells required to fight TB.
There has been a 140 percent increase in cases of TB over the past five years in Asia, most due to the HIV epidemic, scientists told the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) annual Congress.
Professor Suzanne Crowe said cells targeted by HIV infection were the same cells required to fight TB and mount “an effective immune response.”
As HIV infection progresses, the number of lymphocytes decrease and macrophages don’t function properly. The macrophage is normally responsible for ingesting and killing the TB bacillus.
“Thus, reactivation of TB is more common and there is increased risk of new infection in HIV-infected persons,” the researcher said. “What is generally lacking in Asia-Pacific are highly skilled doctors who can manage HIV infection. There is a lack of access to low-cost tests which are needed to monitor HIV infection,” she said.
The infectious diseases expert at Melbourne’s, The Alfred hospital, said she was involved in developing a low-cost test that would be a bit like a dipstick used for a pregnancy test.
Of the 33.2 million people in the world living with HIV, 8.3 million are in Asia and 78,000 are in Oceania.
– by Gene J. Koprowski, MA, Editorial Director and Nancy Bruening, Associate Managing Editor
Posted: May 13th, 2008 under HIV, Impaired Immunity, Tuberculosis.
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NIH research project targets the weaknesses of drug-resistant microbes
Doctors and researchers across the country are concerned by the increasing numbers of drug resistant microbes – called “super bugs†by some.
To fight the growing international threat of drug resistant microbes, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is partnering with other federal agencies and public and private sector organizations to meet the challenge of finding ways to control drug resistant diseases. According to a recent paper released by NIAID addressing this issue, director Anthony S. Fauci, MD, reports that NIAID invested more than $800 million in 2007 researching the etiology of drug resistant microbes, and the means needed to deal with them.
In an interview with N. Kent Peters, PhD, program officer, Antibacterial Resistance Bacteriology and Mycology Branch, NIAID, Infection Protection asked what NIAID was now doing to address the growing concern about drug resistant microbes. Dr. Peters said that the government research institute is engaged in a multifaceted research program, centered on the “basic cell function within the bacteria.â€
From what we are told, if the center, or soft underbelly, so to speak, of the bacterial cell can be identified, it can then be attacked directly with antibiotics. That will kill the pathogen.Â
NIAID is also interested in the following:
* Furthering research that will develop new drugs, including anti-microbial therapies and antibiotics.
* Developing those drugs quickly to replace those that mutant microbes now resist.
Further, NIAID is researching the possibility of a more rapid diagnostic method for clinicians, reducing the time — currently twenty-four to forty-eight hours for culture growth — to discover whether or not a diagnosed disease will eventually be resistant to the drugs used to overcome it.
The current clinical practice of prescribing a series of antibiotics for a patient in hopes that one will attack and kill the presenting infection, while sometimes successful, may have the serious side effect of creating more drug resistant microbes, researchers said. But, the faster diagnostic tool would help physicians narrow the choice of antibiotics to the one or ones that would affect only the causing bacteria.
These microbes have in recent decades mutated to resist current antibiotics, and because of this resistance many diseases thought to be under control worldwide are now breaking out again in alarming numbers. TB, malaria and cholera to mention only three are no longer only medical problems of the past – they have become increasingly prominent as the drug resistant disease roll is complied, researchers said.
Added to the above, other well-known infectious diseases – HIV/AIDS, influenza and hepatitis – are becoming more and more difficult to treat due to drug resistance.
Doctors said another mutating drug resistant disease that is increasing at an alarming rate is the long-known Staphylococcus aureus. Staph infection has been around in hospital settings for many decades. In the 1940s Staph infection was brought under control by the use of the then “wonder-drug” penicillin. However, by the end of the 1950s S. aureus had developed a resistance to penicillin to the point that a new drug Methicillin was developed to treat common hospital staph infection. But Staphylococcus aureus has continued to evolve and mutate, becoming more resistant to Methicillin, and even beginning to resist vancomycin, the one drug that seemed to effectively control the infection and combat resistance. Â
The key personnel at NIAID working on this program are: Anthony S. Fauci, MD, N. Kent Peters, PhD, Dennis M. Dixon, PhD, and Steven M. Holland, MD.
 With the intent focus of NIH and NIAID on discovering new antibiotics and new drug therapy procedures to overcome drug resistance in microbes, it appears that the scientific research will be successful. Naiad’s quest for success in combating microbial resistance is enhanced by the cooperation of federal agencies and non-governmental organizations making up the Federal Interagency Task Force on Antimicrobial Resistance: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Lily Not-For-Profit Partnership for TB Early Phase Drug Discovery, and the Novaris Institute for Tropical Diseases.     Â
– by Dr. Herb Marlow, PhD, National Correspondent
 Dr. N. Kent Peters of the NIH says bacterial research project is “multi-faceted.”
Posted: April 1st, 2008 under Antibiotic Resistant, HIV, Tuberculosis.
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Tuberculosis, newsreel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joBvWmKfIfQ
Posted: March 29th, 2008 under Audio-Video Reports, Tuberculosis.
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Tuberculosis, an interesting video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joBvWmKfIfQ
Posted: March 29th, 2008 under Audio-Video Reports, Tuberculosis.
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Worst TB epidemic since debut of antibiotics reported in Africa, doctors say
A new study has revealed a dramatic rise in the past 15 years in tuberculosis cases in Africa. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, Africa is facing the “worst tuberculosis epidemic since the invention of antibiotics.”Africa is home to 11 percent of the world’s population, but carries 29 percent of the world’s TB cases and 34 percent of all TB-related deaths. From 1990 to the year 2005, the incidence of TB more than doubled, mainly in southern, eastern and central African nations.According to the head of HIV research at Johannesburg’s Witswatersrand University, Francois Venter, a major cause is HIV/AIDS which weakens a person’s ability to fight disease. “There’s so much TB floating around in this community that conventional approaches to prevention and treatment are not going to win,” Venter said.TB is spread through the air usually by the cough of an infected person. More than three million people in Africa are living with TB and a half-million die from it each year. Tuberculosis is treatable, but diagnosis can take such a long time, a period during which the victim is in the community spreading the affliction. Doctors say that many TB victims die before they are diagnosed and many who are diagnosed die anyway “because they begin treatment too late.”But, health care systems in many countries have difficulty responding to the threat because of a lack of funding, personnel, drugs, and laboratories.”The numbers of patients with TB are astronomical,” said Venter. “Every morning we do a ward around here and it’s just TB, TB, and more TB, a dozen different forms, but all of it TB. It’s scary to me that there doesn’t seem to be a plan.”Other aggravating factors:* The emergence of TB strains that are resistant to most drugs.* The victims of these strains are HIV positive and few of them are ever cured.Venter says current TB programs are not working and as a result governments and policy makers need to declare a TB emergency similar to that for HIV/AIDS.– by Gene J. Koprowski, editorial director
Posted: March 25th, 2008 under Feature Stories, Tuberculosis.
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