Before there were drugs to fight TB, it was once the leading cause of death in America, and is still a problem in the United States with more than 14,000 new cases reported in 2005, although it now it kills most often in the poorest nations where people have trouble paying for drugs to fight it. Caused by bacteria, it usually infects the lungs but it can infect any part of the body, including the kidneys, spine and brain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to a statement from the Weill Cornell, even the best drugs are losing their effectiveness and resulting in 400,000 documented cases of drug resistant TB infections last year alone.
Dr. Carl. F. Nathan, chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and the principal researcher on one of the grants explained why quick acting drugs are important to fight TB.
In a statement, Nathan said that doctors could shorten the length of time patients needed to be on drugs to fight TB from the current six months or longer to a few weeks if they developed drugs to kill TB organisms in their non-replicating phase, which is most of their existence.
"Finding those effective compounds may also mean more effective therapies for the emerging drug-resistant forms of TB," Nathan said.
Finding drugs that patients only need to be on for weeks instead of six months is also important because most of the new cases are in developing countries where people have limited access to doctors and follow-up care. Treating those patients to cure them and eliminate infection is important to them and to the rest of the world. In today's world of global travel tourists and business travelers from every nation can be exposed to TB elsewhere and bring it home with them.
People with TB bacilli in their lungs pass it into the air to others when the infected person coughs, sneezes or talks, then only a small amount needs to be inhaled by another person for them to become infected.
According to the World Health Organization, an untreated person with TB will infect 10 to 15 other people per year. Some of those will become sick quickly, but others will develop a dormant form of the disease that can become active later if their immune system is weakened.
