Tuberculosis : The Causative Agent Of Tuberculosis ( Tb )

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Worldwide Tuberculosis is caused by M.bovis and M.africanum, in addition to M.tuberculosis. This is likely due to closer interactions between people and livestock, another host for the organisms. Transmissions to humans from susceptible animal species and their products like milk is also possible. It affects lungs and respiratory tract. With the advent of the AIDS epidemic, there has been a steady yearly increase in the number of global TB cases. In the United States, this disease mostly occurs among homeless, elderly and malnourished, or among alcoholic males, minorities and immigrants. The majority of active cases result from reactivation of old, dormant infections.
I. History of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
In the year 1882, Robert Koch identified Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB). According to Mandal, Mycobacterium tuberculosis existed about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. It has also been proved that Europeans contributed a a very large extension in the spead of TB around the word (Jaeger et al., 2012). Tuberculosis reached its peak in 18th century and resulted in large number of deaths. At the time, TB was rampant, causing one-seventh of all cell deaths in Europe and one-third of deaths among productive young adults. Today TB remains a global health problem of enormous dimension. It has been reported by Centre for disease Control and Prevention that in the year 2011, about 1.4 million people died with TB all around the world and about 9 million people became sick with TB (CDC | TB | Data and Statistics").
II. Characteristics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis
A. Morphology
Mycobacterium belongs to phylum Actinobacteria and family Mycobacteriaceae. Mycobacteria are usually slightly curved or straig...

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...in 108 replications of Mtb. The likelihood of spontaneous mutations causing resistance to both isoniazid and rifampin is the product of these possibilities, or 1 in 1016. However, these biological mechanisms of resistance break down when chemotherapy is inadequate. In the circumstances of monotherapy, erratic drug injection, omission of one or more drugs, suboptimal dosage, poor drug absorption, or an insufficient number of active drugs in a regime, a susceptible strain of Mtb may become resistant to multiple drugs within a matter of months.
Instead of BCG, currently a vaccine is being developed which uses microbial vectors (Junqueira-Kipnis et al., 2013). Thus, the ongoing research in vaccines against TB will help to find this disease and to eliminate this disease.
Thus, rates of tuberculosis can be decreased by better public health measures and social condition.

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