Wikipedia:VideoWiki/Tuberculosis

Overview
Tuberculosis (or TB) is an infectious disease, usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. TB generally affects the lungs, but can also affect other parts of the body.

Symptoms
Most people affected by TB do not have symptoms, and the disease is not active. This is called latent tuberculosis. However, about 10% of latent infections progress to active disease, which, if left untreated, kills about half of those affected.

Chronic cough
The classic symptoms of active TB are a chronic cough, with blood containing sputum, a fever, night sweats, and weight loss.

Weight loss
The last symptom of weight loss can be so pronounced that it gave TB it historic name of "consumption".

Other infections
Infection of other organs can cause a wide range of symptoms, including weakness, night sweats, and swollen lymph nodes.

Cause
Active TB in the lungs is very contagious. In fact, it is so infectious that a person can spread it through the air, by something as simple as coughing, spitting, speaking or sneezing.

Active infections
And active infection is more likely to occur in people with HIV or AIDS, those who are immunocompromised, and in those who smoke.

Latent TB
On the other hand, people with latent TB do not spread the disease.

Diagnosis
Diagnosis of active TB is based on chest X-rays, as well as microscopic examination, and culture of body fluids.

Diagnosis of latent TB
Diagnosis of latent TB is made using the tuberculin skin test (which is also called the Mantoux skin test), or blood tests.

Prevention
Prevention of TB involves screening those at high risk, early detection and treatment of cases, and prompt vaccination with the bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine. Those at high risk include household, workplace, and social contacts of people with active TB.

Treatment
Treatment requires the use of multiple antibiotics, over a long period of time. Antibiotic resistance is making TB harder to treat, with increasing rates of multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis (called MDR-TB), and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (called XDR-TB).