Alarming spread of drug-resistant TB threatens global health

Date: Mar-21-2014The medical aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

has published a briefing paper about the alarming spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis, which

they refer to as the "biggest threat to global health you've never heard of."

Tuberculosis (TB), which is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is one of the

deadliest diseases in the world, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

(CDC).

Every year, around 8 million people around the world fall ill with TB, and 1.3 million die of

it.

TB spreads when a person with an active infection in the lungs coughs or sneezes droplets

containing the bacteria into the air and these are then inhaled by someone else.

The disease usually affects the lungs, but it can also affect other organs. Typical symptoms

include persistent coughing, sometimes with blood, weight loss, night sweats, fever, fatigue

and loss of appetite.

Inadequate global response has led to surge in drug-resistant TB

Standard TB is curable, but because of inadequate global response, there is now a growing

epidemic of strains that are drug resistant, says the MSF

briefing paper.

Each year, over 8 million people around the world fall ill with TB.

For example, Medical News Today reported on a Lancet study that found patients

in South Africa with untreatable forms of TB were being discharged into the community and contributing to the spread of the

disease.

The result is that deadlier drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) strains are spreading at an alarming

rate, even to people who have never had TB before.

Drug-resistant TB is much harder to cure. Half a million new cases of it are diagnosed every

year.

Standard drugs do not work, and doctors have to resort to long, expensive, complex and

arduous treatments that only cure half of infected patients, at best.

Drug-resistant TB 'is everybody's problem'

MSF Medical Director Dr. Sidney Wong says:

"The DR-TB crisis is everybody's problem and demands an immediate international response. It doesn't matter where you live; until new short and more effective treatment combinations

are found, the odds of surviving this disease today are dismal."

One of the reasons that DR-TB is spreading so rapidly is because only 1 in 5 people infected

get the treatment they need. And when they do get the treatment, they have to endure

2 gruelling years of daily injections and have to swallow over 10,000 pills.

Moreover, the treatments are toxic and make the patients horrendously ill, with some becoming

psychotic or suffering permanent loss of hearing.

And now, there are strains emerging that even harder to treat - multidrug-resistant TB or

MDR-TB. MSF say cases of this have doubled in the UK over the last 10 years, and London is

already regarded as the "TB capital of Western Europe."

New drugs have yet to be trialled in combination as effective TB treatments

Although new drugs have recently become available, it will be years before they can make a

difference, say MSF, because to be effective against DR-TB, drugs have to be used in combination

and the new ones have not yet been tested together in clinical trials.

MSF urge governments, drug companies and researchers to act now to develop new, short, safe

and effective treatments to fight the growing crisis of DR-TB.

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD




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