Consumption. The White Plague. Scrofula. Tuberculosis (TB) has been known by so many names over the ages, and those names reflect just how long it’s been around and just how misunderstood it’s been. It’s killed kings and generals, playwrights, and poets.
TB still sickens 10 million people every year and kills 1.5 million – even though it’s easily prevented and can be treated. It’s unusual because it needs to be treated even if the person infected has no symptoms at all.
And even though it’s an ancient disease, TB keeps evolving into new and ever more unpleasant forms. Now, multi-drug-resistant (MDR) TB infects half a million people around the world each year, according to the World Health Organization. A third of these MDR TB infections go undetected, and that means there are tens of millions of people who do not get the treatment they need and who can go on to infect others.
Dr. Jeffrey Tornheim has been studying ways to test people to quickly and easily tell if they’ve got a drug-resistant form of TB infection and need special medications to treat it right away. Quick information can help stop the spread of these dangerous forms of the infection and can ensure that patients and health professionals don’t waste time, money, and medicine with the wrong treatments.
In this episode of One World One Health, Dr. Tornheim, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as well as at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, chats with host Maggie Fox about why TB is so hard to fight and how genomics can make that fight a little easier.