tuberculosis: Diagnosis and Treatment

Diagnosis and Treatment

Diagnosis is made by a tuberculin skin test. It can be confirmed by X rays of the chest and sputum examination. Ideally, treatment begins after a skin test signals exposure but before active disease has developed. The treatment of choice for prevention and for active cases is the antimicrobial drug isoniazid (INH), available since 1956. In infected individuals it now is usually used in combination with other antituberculosis drugs such as rifampin, pyrazinamide, and ethambutol. Bedaquiline is used to treat multidrug resistant and extensively drug resistant TB.

Tuberculosis drugs have to be taken regularly, typically for 6 to 12 months. Many patients abandon their treatment when they feel better; similarly, preventive treatment is often abandoned because of the inconvenience. Such noncompliance is believed to be the main reason for the upsurge in drug-resistant strains of the TB bacilli, many of which are resistant to more than one drug. Drug-resistant TB is difficult to treat and has a much higher death rate; extensively resistant TB is especially worrisome because it can be essentially untreatable.

The combination drug rifater (rifampin, isoniazid, and pyrazinamide) has simplified drug administration. Directly observed treatment, where health-care workers watch patients take each dose of medicine, has proved effective in eliminating the problem of noncompliance in the United States, but monitoring has been less effective in many other parts of the world.

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