Toberculosis

Tuberculosis
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Introductions
Tuberculosis, or TB, is an infectious ailment caused by bacteria known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which commonly affects the lungs (Siegenthaler, 2007). It is a communicable disease that spreads from an individual to another through discharge from the throat and lungs of persons infected with the active respiratory disease.
In healthy people, infections with Mycobacterium tuberculosis often have no symptoms, since the immune systems of an individual keep off the bacteria. The signs of active TB are coughing, sometimes with mucous with blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever, and night sweats. Tuberculosis is a disease treatable with a six-month use of antibiotics.
TB is a disease that can imitate different diseases. It has been affecting people for many years and the cadavers from 8th Century shows the evidence (WHO, 2010). In the 1900s, TB was the root cause of death in the United States. Robert Koch found the cause of Tuberculosis in 1882 as the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The increased understanding of TB and public awareness on treatments like quarantine and drugs for treatment has seen a decrease of the disease in the developed countries.
The Various Kinds of Tuberculosis (TB)
There are different forms of TB; however the leading types are TB that are active or latent. Tuberculosis that is active occurs when the ailment is aggressively showing symptoms and it can spread to other individuals. Latent TB is when, an individual ails from the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but the bacteria are not showing signs. This is normally owing to the immune system of the body suppressing the growth of bacteria and its transmission. Individuals with TB that is latent usually cannot transmit Mycobacteria TB bacteria to others except when the immunity of the individual fails; the failure of the immune system can cause the bacteria growth, causing the person to have active TB; so the disease becomes infectious.
Several types of TB exist in either the active or the latent form. The type of TB depends on the signs and symptoms and where the Mycobacterium tuberculosis specially infects, which vary from one individual to another. Subsequently, pulmonary tuberculosis mostly affects the pulmonary system, skin symptoms causes cutaneous TB, while small lesions or granulomas that is widespread in the body organs, is the miliary TB. It is not unusual for some persons to get infected by several types of active TB.
What Are The Causes Tuberculosis?
TB is the infection of human immune system by the bacteria known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These bacteria have slow growth, spread on air, and can develop within body cells intracellular parasitic bacteria (WHO, 2010). The bacteria mycobacterium has a unique cell wall that guards it from the body's defenses. The Mycobacteria that escape damage by body immunity may transmit TB through the blood or lymphatic paths to organs like the lungs, kidneys, skin, and bones that oxygenate well. TB granulomas typically consist of an area of necrotic central area. These lesions also have mycobacterium. In infections that are latent, a tough case usually surrounds the granulomas, and in some individuals, the granulomas harden, but if the defense of the immunity fails in the beginning or at a future period, they reactivate; the bacteria remain to transmit and interrupt the function of the organ.
What Are Risk Factors For Tuberculosis?
There are risk factors that cause the spread of tuberculosis. Some groups of people are susceptible to have a high risk in contracting TB, such as those working in healthcare facility and in places where people with TB may live, for instance, in prisons, nursing homes, hospice for HIV patients and homeless housings (WHO, 2010). Those who associate with drug addicts or individual with TB infections are at a higher risk. The various individuals at risk of infection includes; visitors and refugees from regions known to have high occurrence of TB. The young and the old with weak immune systems can contract TB. Others are patients with HIV infection, head and neck cancer patients, transplant patients, diabetic, kidney disease patients, and those individuals undergoing immunosuppressive therapy and silicosis
Signs and Symptoms of TB
There are different types of tuberculosis, but lung TB is responsible for the 85% of all TB infections. Subsequently, pulmonary TB symptoms and signs diagnosed before other types of TB. The common medical symptoms and signs of pulmonary TB include high temperature, sweating at night, coughing, bloodstained phlegm, losing weight, tiredness, and chest pain (Cash, 2011). Older individuals often show signs of pneumonitis.
The other type of TB includes Skeletal TB that causes pain in the spine, stiffness of the back and possibility of paralysis. Headaches, coma and changes in mental state are symptoms of TB meningitis. TB arthritis causes pain in the hips and knees. Genitourinary TB causes dysuria, flank pain, increased frequency, and granulomas. Gastrointestinal TB can cause difficulty in swallowing, ulcers that do not heal causing pain in the abdomen and bloody diarrhea. Miliary TB shows signs of many small lesions that spread in crucial organs. Pleural TB symptoms are empyema and pleural effusions. Patients infected with tuberculosis bacteria that resist multiple medicines are MDR TB. Extensive drug resistance (XDR) TB is a patient infected with TB bacteria that resist effective anti-TB medications.
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