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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Doctors see sign of highly drug-resistant TB LANTANA, Florida — It started with a cough, a cool-season hack that refused to go away. Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood. I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad." It was really bad, and not just for him. Doctors say Juarez's incessant hack was a sign of what they have both dreaded and expected for years — this country's first case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. The Associated Press learned of his case, which until now has not been made public, as part of a six-month look at the soaring global challenge of drug resistance. Juarez's strain — so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB — has never before been seen in the United States, said Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation's leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis is so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it. "These are the ones we really fear because I'm not sure how we treat them," Ashkin said. Forty years ago, the world thought it had conquered TB and any number of other diseases through the new wonder drugs: antibiotics. Today, all the leading killer infectious diseases on the planet — TB, malaria and HIV among them — are mutating at an alarming rate, hitchhiking their way in and out of countries. The reason: overuse and misuse of the very drugs that were supposed to have saved us. Just as the drugs were a manmade solution to dangerous illness, the problem with them is also manmade. It is fueled worldwide by everything from counterfeit drugmakers to the unintended consequences of giving drugs to the poor without properly monitoring their treatment. In the United States, drug-resistant infections killed more than 65,000 people last year, more than prostate and breast cancer combined. "Drug resistance is starting to be a very big problem. In the past, people stopped worrying about TB, and it came roaring back. We need to make sure that doesn't happen again," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was himself infected with tuberculosis while caring for drug-resistant patients at a New York clinic in the early 1990s. In April, the World Health Organization sounded alarms by holding its first drug-resistant TB conference in Beijing. The message was clear: The disease already has spread to all continents and is increasing rapidly. Even worse, WHO estimates, only 1 percent of resistant patients received appropriate treatment last year. Doctors stumped Juarez's strain of TB puzzled doctors. He had never had TB before. Where did he pick it up? Had he passed it on? Could they stop it before it killed him? At first, mainstream doctors tried to treat him. But the disease already had gnawed a golf ball-sized hole into his right lung. TB germs can float in the air for hours, especially in tight places with little sunlight or fresh air. So every time Juarez coughed, sneezed, laughed or talked, he could spread the deadly germs to others. Tuberculosis is the top single infectious killer of adults worldwide, and it lies dormant in one in three people, according to WHO. Of those, 10 percent will develop active TB, and about 2 million people a year will die from it. Simple TB is simple to treat — as cheap as a $10 course of medication for six to nine months. But if treatment is stopped short, the bacteria fight back and mutate into a tougher strain. It can cost $100,000 a year or more to cure drug-resistant TB, which is described as multi-drug-resistant (MDR), extensively drug-resistant (XDR) and XXDR. There are now about 500,000 cases of MDR tuberculosis a year worldwide. XDR tuberculosis killed 52 of the first 53 people diagnosed with it in South Africa three years ago. Drug-resistant TB is a "time bomb," said Dr. Masae Kawamura, who heads the Francis J. Curry National Tuberculosis Center in San Francisco, "a manmade problem that is costly, deadly, debilitating and the biggest threat to our current TB control strategies." Juarez underwent three months of futile treatment in a Fort Lauderdale hospital. Then, in December 2007, he was sent to a hospital just south of West Palm Beach. There are two ways to get drug-resistant TB. Most cases develop from taking medication inappropriately. But it can also be transmitted like simple TB, a cough or a sneeze. With the emergence of resistant TB, several private drug companies have started developing new treatments, but getting an entire regimen on the market could take 24 years. In the meantime, WHO estimates, each victim will infect an average of 10 to 15 others annually before they die. Fears of ailment's return Juarez spent a year and a half living alone and receiving treatment. When put side by side, his CAT scans from before and after treatment are hard to believe. The dark hole is gone, and only a small white scar tattoos his lung. "They told me the TB is gone, but I know that TB, it doesn't have a cure. It only has a treatment like HIV," he said. "The TB can come back. I saw people who came back to the hospital twice and some of them died. So, it's very scary."
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#1. To: Disgusted (#0)
Just as the drugs were a manmade solution to dangerous illness, the problem with them is also manmade. It is fueled worldwide by everything from counterfeit drugmakers to the unintended consequences of giving drugs to the poor without properly monitoring their treatment. They're poor because they're stupid. I know, I've spent years there. The real problem is that when they buy antibiotics over the counter in the turd world, they only take enough to feel better. They don't take the entire "course" of treatment. This results in them using their bodies as petri dishes to breed antibiotic resistant strains of the bacteria; and in the end WE pay. Deport'em all!
Show Me Obama's Birth Certificate!
Dr. Shockly is/was right. This no doubt troubles the Os, but it's a fact.
"They told me the TB is gone, but I know that TB, it doesn't have a cure. It only has a treatment like HIV," he said... hehehehehehehe... I love the way MSM dances on the edge of truthful reporting by throwing in HIV [ a result of decadent life style choices] together with malaria and TB, putting all 3 diseases under the "umbrella" of infectious diseases. Then it gets better when the uneducated Third World [illegal?] dupe recites back verbatim these distorted Pinocchio public health factoids. After Amnesty and SAP, it will be only a matter of time before the entire dumbed down [or dumb from the get go - take your pick] US population will willingly roll up their shirt sleeves and offer their arms to get inoculated with the new, FREE vaccinations against drug resistant infectious diseases like malaria, TB, and HIV. Easy peasy. Cake walk. It's for the children.
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