What Is Active TB?

Active tuberculosis is a highly contagious bacterial infection that is spread through close contact. If you are exposed to someone with active tuberculosis or when you have symptoms which include a cough you should see your physician to make sure that you have not contracted the disease. Luckily, there are steps you can take. Prognosis for the disease is good when caught early.

How You Get It

• If you walk by a person with active tuberculosis who has coughed or sneezed, you can get it simply by breathing in the air droplets near them. This highly contagious disease kills many people in developing countries. In the U.S. it is usually caught early and treated.

  The populations who are most at risk of developing active tuberculosis are babies, the elderly and anyone with a compromised immune system. You also have a high risk of developing the disease if you live in crowded conditions, do not eat right or are around someone who has the illness.

Symptoms

• Symptoms of active tuberculosis include a cough that may produce blood, night sweats, exhaustion, fever, weight loss, possible chest pain or wheezing.

Diagnosis

• Sometimes signs of active tuberculosis are seen during examination by a physician. Signs include enlarged lymph nodes, unusual sounds in the lungs and clubbing of the fingers or toes.

  Typical diagnostic tools that are used include the tuberculin skin test, chest x-ray, CT scan of the chest, or a bronchoscopy. Your doctor will also take a sputum culture to examine the sputum under a microscope to see if there are microorganisms present.

  Another less used, more expensive test is the interferon gamma blood test that also tests for the infection.

Treatment

• The treatment for active tuberculosis begins with antibiotics. The antibiotics most used include Isoniazid, Rifampin, Ethambutol and Pyrazinamide. Other drugs that may also be used to treat active tuberculosis include Amikacin, Ethionamide, Moxifoxacin and Streptomycin.

  The goal is to treat the infection. Many times a combination of medications is needed. The drugs may need to be taken long term up to or over a year in some cases to fight the infection. As with other bacterial infections, it is very important that you take your medications as instructed by your physician. When you do not you may become immune to the antibiotics thus making it more difficult to fight the infection.

Prognosis

• You may notice an improvement in your symptoms in about two or three weeks. You must however continue your medications as instructed. Your physician will not see an improvement in your chest x-rays for about a month or so.

  The prognosis for active tuberculosis is good if the infection is caught early and treatment is started right away.

Instructions

• You should contact your physician if you have been exposed to tuberculosis or are showing signs of the disease. You should also contact him if you are under treatment for the disease and after three weeks are showing no signs of improvement.