Tuberculosis
TB is a disease that can cause a serious illness and can damage a person's organs. Every year more than 25,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with TB disease. That's only a fraction of the amount of people who carry the
Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a rod-shaped bacterium. TB is spread through the air by carriers of the germ. People who breathe the same air can become infected with the TB germ. People who do work around or with people with the TB disease should take medicine. TB infection means that the person has the TB germs but they are in an inactive state. When
TB germs enter the body, the immune system builds a wall around them. While TB germs are inactive, they cannot cause any damage. These germs can stay alive for many years in these walls and eventually break out. At this time TB is active then it becomes TB disease. It can now affect the system's organs. A person can have TB disease shortly after being infected with TB germs if the person's immune system is weak.
TB can attack any part of the system. The lungs are the most common area of attack. People with the TB disease have one or more of the following symptoms: a cough that hangs on, fevers, weight loss, night sweats, constant fatigue, and loss of appetite. A person with the TB disease in the late stages will cough up blood streaked sputum. People who have Active TB disease usually only have mild symptoms. There are three tests to diagnose TB disease. One is the Tuberculin
Mantoux PPD skin test; two is a Chest X-ray which is given after the Skin test is positive; three Sputum Test reveals if TB germs are in thick liquid a person coughs up. The Tuberculin Mantoux PPD skin test is given by placing a substance called PPD Tuberculin under the top layer of the skin with a very small needle and syringe. The doctor will inject the needle into the skin which will only feel like a slight pen prick. A few days later the skin test reaction will be read by a trained health worker. If the skin around the prick israised and it is bigger or the same size as a pencil eraser then the person is likely to have been infected with TB germs. This does not mean he or she has TB disease. You should always retest yourself even if the first test was negative for a few reasons. If your immune system has been weakened, then your immune system may
Arch Dermatol. 2007;143(1):124–125. Puchenkova, S. G. (1996). "
requiered to determine treatment. Lab tests or imaging is often requiered as well. It’s chronic,
...d lymphokines. Lymphokines will attract other inflammatory cells into the site. This response generally peaks in 48 hours after PPD injection. Redness at the injection site and induration resulting from cellular infiltration represent the immune response to the skin test (Nayak, 2012).
A reaction to a tuberculin skin test is how most people find out if they have tuberculosis. It takes 48 hours after the test for a reaction to develop, which is a red bump where the needle went in. Doctors can diagnose tuberculosis from the results of a chest x-ray o...
Tuberculosis is an air-borne disease, hence, it can be passed from an infected person to a healthy individual through coughing, sneezing and other salivary secretions. Tuberculosis is caused by the transfer of Mycobacteriun Tuberculosis (M. Tuberculosis) also known as Tubercle Bacillus, a small particle of 1-5 microns in diameter, due to the small size, when an infected person sneezes or coughs, about 3,000 particles are expelled. M. Tuberculosis responsible for tuberculosis is able to stay in the air for a long period of time (about 6hoursAnother way of acquiring Tuberculosis is by drinking unpasteurized milk, milk straight from cow, although this is not a common mode of transmission, it can be found in rural areas. Ingestion of contaminated cow milk transmits Mycobacterium Bovis, the animal form which is still potent enough to cause tuberculosis in humans. ). Tuberculosis transmission is affected by exposure, socioeconomic status of person, proximity, immune status of uninfected individual (%&&%&? CDC).
One of the first steps to treating Tuberculosis is identifying which form has developed in the body. The two forms that could progress in the body are latent Tuberculosis infection and active Tuberculosis infection (CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports). Latent Tuberculosis is the dormant form of the bacteria, meaning that it is inactive and doesn?t cause an infectious reaction in the body. Even if the latent form enters the body, treatment should be sought (CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports). Latent Tuberculosis can become active Tuberculosis easily though, especially if the immune system is compromised by another infection, like HIV (CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports). Active Tuberculosis infects the body immediately. Symptoms show in the body meaning the bacteria is effecting the cells of the body. Identifying the form is important because treatment is dependent upon it. Testing for TB involves a skin test, usually within seven work-days of contact with the bacteria. Without knowing what is in the body, the drugs won?t be as effective and might even cause drug-resistance.
Education can be a powerful weapon in fighting tuberculosis in the United States also around the world. Today, it is encouraging how so many people know how TB contracts human and what cause drug resistant effects among those who are under TB treatment.
A TB skin test, also known as a PPD test, and a TB blood test are the two most commonly used ways to test for TB. For the TB skin test, the doctor will inject a small amount of liquid called tuberculin, a protein extract from cultures of TB bacteria, into the skin of your arm. The patients usually need to wait 48 to 72 hours for the test result. If you have a localized swelling at your injection area, it means you probably have the TB disease. However, the test result can be wrong. A negative test result could be a false negative, which means the individual could have TB; this occurs in 5% to 10% of patients, especially in patients who have HIV, children and elderly people. On the other hand, the ...
Handbook of Laboratory and Diagnostic Tests with Nursing Implications (3rd edition). Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Company.
The way this disease is diagnosed is through the laboratory methods. The diagnosis is found on by looking at fluid or tissues by microscopy. T. b. rhodesiense is much more intense than T. b. gambiense, therefore you can find T. b. rhodesiense faster and easier, because its takes over more of the body than T. b. gambiense does. You can find T. b. rhodesiense in the blood, lymph node fluid or fluid, or a biopsy of chancre. As for T. b. gambiense you cannot find it in the blood easily, therefor is harder to diagnose. After diagnosis all patients with African sleeping sickness must have their cerebrospinal fluid examined to make sure there CNS is not in any danger because of the parasitic
Malaria (also called biduoterian fever, blackwater fever, falciparum malaria, plasmodium, Quartan malaria, and tertian malaria) is one of the most infectious and most common diseases in the world. This serious, sometimes-fatal disease is caused by a parasite that is carried by a certain species of mosquito called the Anopheles. It claims more lives every year than any other transmissible disease except tuberculosis. Every year, five hundred million adults and children (around nine percent of the world’s population) contract the disease and of these, one hundred million people die. Children are more susceptible to the disease than adults, and in Africa, where ninety percent of the world’s cases occur and where eighty percent of the cases are treated at home, one in twenty children die of the disease before they reach the age of five. Pregnant women are also more vulnerable to disease and in certain parts of Africa, they are four times as likely to contract the disease and only half as likely to survive it.
Tuberculosis is transmitted by inhalation of aerosols containing the tubercle bacilli. The required inoculum size for infection is usually high, but easily occurs with exposure to a patient who is currently infected. The products of dried aerosols, droplet nuclei, are particularly infectious because they remain in the air for an extended time, and upon inhalation easily move to the alveoli. The severe damage related to infection is caused by the reaction of the host. The tuberculosis infection has two phases, primary and secondary.
Wines, M. 2007. Virulent TB in South Africa may imperil millions. New York Time. January 8. Accessed online at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/world/africa/28tuberculosis.html?pagewanted=all
platelets on a slide, you would need to have the specimen recollected because of a clot, or
5.) Mylonakis, M.D., Eleftherios. PPD skin test. 10 June 2006 MedlinePlus. 26 July 2006 .