I’ve always thought of tuberculosis as a terrifying thing of a past, something that no longer is super relevant today. Thus it was shocking to find out that it is the deadliest infectious disease in the world. It has surpassed AIDS as the cause of most deaths worldwide, yet it is largely unheard about in the USA. However, there are still millions of people a year who die from tuberculosis and around 10 million get infected with TB. There is the additional problem with the bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat.
There has been a lot of work on trying to develop a vaccine , however this newest one only has a 50% success rate. However low it is, scientists are still optimistic because it could save millions of lives. The current one used, BCG is not even in use in the USA because it does not protect adolescents or adults against attack of the lungs. However, this new vaccine known as M72 was only tested on adults who had latent TB and in Africa, which is not a representative population. This is only one country, one demographic of people, and one age group. Despite this, it is only composed of two shots one month apart which is much easier than taking antibiotics every day for a month. People would forget, which would allow antibiotic resistance to occur, leading to the problem of multi-drug resistant strains.
Treatment for tuberculosis can be up to 18 months, and thus the FDA has approved a new treatment that would reduce this time to 6 months. This consists of 3 different drugs taken orally, and two would target drug resistant strains which is becoming a more and more serious problem. Until recently, it had been very difficult to treat drug resistant strains and hopefully this will allow them to get treatment that is not as long lasting and does not cause pain. People with money would also be able to take off work to be hospitalized for over a year, and the drugs probably cost a lot of money too. Although tuberculosis is not talked about in the USA, it still very much a problem in poorer countries and there needs to be more effort put into treatment. It is not only rich people who deserve treatment and good healthcare.
Fluffy Cows 