Tuberculosis essay

Tuberculosis essay

            Introduction

Tuberculosis is one of the infectious illnesses caused by mycobacterium tuberculosis. Naturally, it affects the lungs but can affect other body parts. This disease is not common in high-income nations but rampant in low- and middle-income countries; it is still a real public health issue. It was reported that ten to twelve million new cases occurred every year between the years 2001 and 2011. (Nemeth & Gold, 2019) Each year about two million people perished from the illness. In older people, Tuberculosis is the second leading cause of death in low-income nations after HIV. The disease is a significant issue in developing countries to children, where it kills more than 200,000 children annually.

Treatment for tuberculosis illness remains a problem for patients and a massive load on the health care system. Medicine-susceptible Tuberculosis needs close observation for a minimum of at least eight months of therapy. A multidrug-resistant tuberculosis analysis will need almost two years of management with poorly accepted and less effective medication. On many occasions, the investigation is still primarily established on direct microscopy, which cannot identify a large percentage of illness. The BCG vaccine,  developed almost a hundred years ago, only offers limited defense against disease.

Causes

During the early years of the disease, medical experts did not precisely reveal its origin. Scientists, however, discovered the source of the illness as a result of advancement in research and analysis. Tuberculosis is a severe and contagious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, bacteria from the more prominent family of Bacillus. The bacterium has a rod-shaped formation. Mostly living in quiet surroundings such as water and soil. It is a favorable environment that supports its survival. Furthermore, people, more so young children, are the primary known victims of the bacterium; infection is transferred faster in the human population, especially children.  The short form of “TB” may demonstrate the disease or the mycobacterium tuberculosis that causes it.

Disease transmission, signs, and symptoms

Tuberculosis is an airborne disease. Mostly transmitted by breathing in the infected air. It shows that most people get Tuberculosis by breathing in infectious particles. Therefore, when an infected person is sneezing, coughing, laughing, spitting, or crooning, the droplets carry the bacterium causing disease outdoors, and a healthy individual can inhale it. While in the lungs, the mycobacterium tuberculosis develops from inactive to more effective Tuberculosis. Thus, there is a high likelihood that the closer individual will get infected with TB than the one who is far away from the infected individual.

Tuberculosis attacks diverse parts of the body. It shows the lungs are the most contested body part by a bacterium. However, TB may affect other body parts, such as the kidneys, brains, small and large intestines, among several other body parts.

There are several diverse types of Tuberculosis, according to medical records. However, there are two main significant types of illness; these are active and latent Tuberculosis. Active Tuberculosis is the type that displays symptoms and can be spread to other healthy individuals, while latent Tuberculosis does not show any signs; hence, it cannot transmit from individual to another. Therefore, most individuals in the whole globe are affected by possible tuberculosis cause of its inactivity and thus challenging to notice. Though, there are higher chances for it to grow faster into Active Tuberculosis. Therefore, although it is inactive, speedy action is required to stop further development into active Tuberculosis.

Signs and symptoms of illness are determined by the type of infection and section of the body that it attacks. In the situation of pulmonary Tuberculosis, the apparent symptoms are persistent coughing, pains in the chest, loss of weight, fever, exhaustion, and many other symptoms. Tuberculosis symptoms are determined by the section of the body part it attacks.

Prevention

There is a need to stop the transmission of the disease from one person to another.it done to identify people with active tuberculosis infections and then curing them through the provision of medication. But if someone is not on treatment, then precaution should be taken to prevent the spread of the bacteria from one person to another. A standard method of tuberculosis prevention is coughing etiquette as the disease is airborne, it will be necessary for individuals who are not under effective treatment to observe coughing etiquette; this will prevent the release of tuberculosis bacteria into the air.

Other methods of preventing Tuberculosis include tuberculosis education. It helps affected people to understand how to take their drugs properly and ensure they do not pass the infection to other people. It will improve the public at large to reduce the stigma that they have with TB. TB treatment is another method of preventing spreads by lowering the first incident of the disease occurring in people with latent Tuberculosis.

Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine is widely used among many vaccines and accessed by more than 85% of newborn children and infants in all the nations where they are members of national childhood immunization strategy(Centre for Disease Control and Prevention). It provides children with accurate prevention against Tuberculosis.

Diagnosis

Like other airborne illnesses, effective diagnosis is an essential element of the eradication of Tuberculosis. Improper and incompetent analysis of the situation will deteriorate the conditions. The most effective technique of diagnosis is the use of the stethoscope and the diagnosis test. Doctors use the stethoscope to examine the status of the lungs and the lymph nodes for any infection.

Also, the medical history of tuberculosis disease, infection, or exposure is essential to diagnosing the patient of any tuberculosis infection. Age, livelihood, country of origin, the race could escalate the patient’s possibility for contact with Tuberculosis or drug-resistant Tuberculosis. Clinicians must also decide whether the patient has health conditions, especially HIV, that increases latent TB infections leading to tuberculosis illness (Meehan, 2019).

The physical exam can provide crucial information about the overall terms of the sick individual and any other factor that might hinder the treatment of Tuberculosis, such as HIV or any other sickness. Also, a blood test is another effective method for diagnosing tuberculosis infections, achieved by injecting a lesser quantity of tuberculin to the skin lower section of the arm, and it will take almost two to three days to get the results. Blood test helps to measure how the immune system of a patient responds to mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Lesions may be observed within the body and can have different sizes, shapes, density, and cavitation. All these abnormalities in the body may suggest the presence of mycobacterium tuberculosis infection; chest radiograph helps to determine the possibility of pulmonary Tuberculosis in an individual who shows a positive reaction to a blood test, but he or she has no symptoms of the disease.

Acid-fast-bacilli (AFB) on sputum smudge or another sample frequently shows the occurrence of the disease. (Davis, 2019) Culture is done on the original samples to approve analysis. A positive culture confirms the interpretation of tuberculosis disease infection. Culture inspection should be done totally in the specimens irrespective of AFB smear results.

Treatment

The sick are required to undertake testing after the accurate analysis and confirmation of the infection. Treating TB with the correct and prescribed drug typically becomes successful. Antibiotics are the most commonly used medicines for treating TB. The treatment, however, is determined by the type of Tuberculosis. Whereas patients with latent Tuberculosis needs a kind of antibiotics, those with active TB need numerous antibiotics for better survival from infections, and tuberculosis patients begin on a four-medication regimen in the initial stages of treatment.

Despite the antibiotic usage for the required period, bacteria that cause disease might still survive, making the disease to take root (Rothchild, 2019). Thus, qualified health professionals need to ensure that infection treatment is completed.

  Conclusion

Tuberculosis is one of the illnesses associated with several deaths occurring in the world currently. Furthermore, due to its effects, it is responsible for several impacts on economic growth. Thus, all affected sectors must collaborate in the discovery, diagnosis, control of the illness, find an effective treatment, care for the affected individuals, and best prevention mechanism for the disease. It assists in making sure that the abolition of the disease and, more crucial, controls the spread of the illness among the vulnerable group in the community.

Reference

Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Tuberculosis (TB): Data and statistics. Retrieved on August 18, 2019, from, https://www.cdc.gov/tb/statistics/default.htm

Davis, C. P. (2019). Tuberculosis (TB). Medicine Net. Retrieved on August 18, 2019, from https://www.medicinenet.com/tuberculosis_tb_facts/article.htm#how_can_people_prevent_tuberculosis

Duarte, R., K. Lönnroth, K., Carvalho, C., Limaa, F., Carvalhog, A. C. C., Muñoz-Torricoh, M., & Centis, R. (2018). Tuberculosis, social determinants, and co-morbidities (including HIV). Pulmonology Journal, 24(2). Pp 115-119

Meehan, C. J.(2019). Whole-genome sequencing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis: current standards and open issues. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 17(9), 533-545

Nemeth, J. & Gold, E. (2019). Latent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection protects the host by changing the activation state of the innate immune system. bioRxiv, 561126.

Rothchild, A. C. (2019). Alveolar macrophages generate a noncanonical NRF2-driven transcriptional response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis in vivo: science immunology, 4(37), eaaw6693.