Tuberculosis (TB)

Tuberculosis commonly called TB is infectious disease which usually attack lungs. This disease can spread into other parts of the body like spine and brain. Mycobacterium Tuberculosis is the bacteria which cause TB. This bacteria spread from person to person. If a person is infected from this bacteria, then the person surround him can also infected. This bacteria spread if infected person sneezes, cough, talk. If you breath in this area. then you can also infected.

Tuberculosis is of two type,

• Latent TB
• Active TB

Latent TB :-  In this type, bacteria lives in body as inactive stage, and you can not get any kind of symptoms. But infection remain in your body as well. So it can be active one day. To prevent them, Doctor prescribe antibiotics.

Active TB :- In this type, germs multiply and they can make you sick. Now you can spread this disease to other also.

Symptoms :- For Latent TB, no symptoms are shown. Skin test is enough to know the infection in the body.
Following symptoms will show if you have Active TB

• Cough more than 3-4 weeks.
• Fever
• Weight loss
• Pain in chest
• No Appetite
• Sweating at night

Diagnosis:- A very common way to check TB is skin test. where an injection of PPD Tuberculin is inserted just below the forearm and left for 2-3 days. If red hard bump swollen up then this can declare a TB Bacteria is present in body.

Even This skin test is not 100% accurate so doctor also ask for other test like Chest X-ray, Blood Test and Sputum Test.

Treatment:- If you have Latent TB, then you can just take antibiotics or only one type of TB drugs.

 But if you are suffering from Active TB then you have to take several TB drugs at once. 

Rifampin 

Bedaquiline

Linezolid

Pyrazinamide

Above are some medicine which are very effective and usefull for TB patient, Amount of drugs is depends on age of patient.