Community | December 27, 2009 | 38 comments

First case of highly drug-resistant Tuberculosis found in US

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091227/ap_on_he_me/as_med_when_drugs_stop_working_killer_tb_8

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091227/ap_on_he_me/as_med_when_drugs_sto...

It started with a cough, an autumn hack that refused to go away.

Then came the fevers. They bathed and chilled the skinny frame of Oswaldo Juarez, a 19-year-old Peruvian visiting to study English. His lungs clattered, his chest tightened and he ached with every gasp. During a wheezing fit at 4 a.m., Juarez felt a warm knot rise from his throat. He ran to the bathroom sink and spewed a mouthful of blood.

I'm dying, he told himself, "because when you cough blood, it's something really bad."

It was really bad, and not just for him.

Doctors say Juarez's incessant hack was a sign of what they have both dreaded and expected for years — this country's first case of a contagious, aggressive, especially drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. The Associated Press learned of his case, which until now has not been made public, as part of a six-month look at the soaring global challenge of drug resistance.

Juarez's strain — so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB — has never before been seen in the U.S., according to Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation's leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis is so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it.

"He is really the future," Ashkin said. "This is the new class that people are not really talking too much about. These are the ones we really fear because I'm not sure how we treat them."

Forty years ago, the world thought it had conquered TB and any number of other diseases through the new wonder drugs: Antibiotics. U.S. Surgeon General William H. Stewart announced it was "time to close the book on infectious diseases and declare the war against pestilence won."

Today, all the leading killer infectious diseases on the planet — TB, malaria and HIV among them — are mutating at an alarming rate, hitchhiking their way in and out of countries. The reason: Overuse and misuse of the very drugs that were supposed to save us.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091227/ap_on_he_me/as_med_when_drugs_stop_working_k...
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  2. tags:
    Health,  Medicine,  Tuberculosis
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38 comments // First case of highly drug-resistant Tuberculosis found in US

  • irishgirlforever
  • stephenthomson
  • mindcruzer
  • stephenthomson
  • mindcruzer
    • 0
      mindcruzer  
    • stephenthomson:

      Yeah I know it's insane. I'm a vegetarian (although I do eat fish occasionally as well) and I eat all organic food. This costs me about $120 a week (my high metabolism is partly to blame). Right now it's all on my line of credit so I'll worry about it when I graduate.

    • 3 years ago
  • dalistuff
  • danitassin
    • 0
      danitassin  

    • It's true. Take the flu for instance. We all just got prescribed flu medicine at the slightest incling of symptoms, which turn out to be a common cold. This caused us to develeop immunities and the flu mutate even quicker. Most new doctors are aware of this now, but practically too late. It's also from a poor diet. I bet he had a very healthy, wholesome diet, free from chemicals and preservatives in Peru. Here it is common to live off of packaged food and fast food. That's why we have the ailments we do. I'm surprised we haven't seen this sooner.

    • 3 years ago
  • OhSee
  • SarahAna
  • alterfox
  • crob80227
    • 0
      crob80227  

    • That's scary.

      Maybe we should be a little more careful in screening people from (ahem) 3rd World countries whose health/safety procedures aren't quite as strict as ours?

      What's wrong with that?

      And here's food for thought, if Al-Qaida wanted to use biological weapons in the US it wouldn't be an elaborate bomb smuggled onto a plane....they would just inject themselves with ebola or small pox or whatever and walk right on the plane.

      And then spend the next 3 or 4 days riding the subway and coughing on people.

    • 3 years ago
  • phukitol
    • 0
      phukitol  

    • YIKES. I've had this yucky cough for months and clear sometimes yellow but mostly clear flem coming up, shortness of breath sometimes....but I've been smoking cigarettes for over a decade so I've been slowing down and eventually will quit all together in 2010....but this shit scares me, maybe it's time to make a doc appointment!? JEEBUS!

    • 3 years ago
  • jac1992
  • JonRaymond
    • 0
      JonRaymond  

    • Wait a minute. Why isn't Obama mentioned here? He must be a fault for this somehow. When you conjure up paranoia and conspiracy you have to mention Obama. Lets get with the program.

    • 3 years ago
  • common_sense_please
  • Patrick_Clarkson
    • 0
      Patrick_Clarkson  

    • Well, what can i say. The world today is destroyed by our own hands. We are humans are worst creature of God though we are the most presious to him. We are the most wicked of all. He gave us evrything and yet we neglet himto his face and now we are plaqued by his wrath.

      Why gathering money in banks when they ought to beused for our own purpose? Why being so rich when one day you will die and take nothing with you? What is in health that has be insured? It's Only God who can insured anyone's health. It's just our stupid mentality and wickedness of heart to towards another.

      Take the health care away from the so-called insurance companies, please fo God sake. Let save our world with sincerity and seriouness.

      Oh. You politicians, you are the worst humans on earth. You are so heartless and careless towards the people you claimed to be who elected you. Bribery is now the order of the dayand law enforment agents are just their tools to get it done. Is this the so-called? SHAME ON YOU, DEVIL INCANATES
      http://www.topnflnews.com/

    • 3 years ago
  • treewolf39
  • insaintity
  • ozoneocean
    • 0
      ozoneocean  

    • It seems that in this case the main problem is easy global transport. If it was just drugs that were the problem, these cases would be domestic- this man came from outside.

    • 3 years ago
  • mindcruzer
  • J_Jammer
  • Tyrannous
  • ras_menelik
  • danitassin
  • Nephwrack
    • 0
      Nephwrack  

    • i call bullshit. this is coming from yahoo? the news agency that turned in a chinese "dissident" because he was researching democracy? Bull Shit.

    • 3 years ago
  • ras_menelik
  • Incredulous
    • 0
      Incredulous  
    • Nephwrack:

      I second your call...anyone notice that with healthcare reform on the horizon we now have all of these stories popping up about how women don't need mammograms as often as previously thought, and too many CT scans cause cancer. In my opinion, big pharma has just begun to wage a campaign against healthcare, because now they are actually going to have to provide treatment without the myriad of excuses they previously used to deny it, so we have the campaign of misinformation developing, and all these previously unheard of studies confirming their bullshit.

      I'm not saying there isn't drug-resistant TB out there, but the "so-called" overuse of antibiotics is NOT related. If they want to curb the damaging effects of antibiotic overuse, perhaps they need to start with the agricultural industry and stop giving antibiotics to animals so they can pack them into tiny spaces and increase their profits...

    • 3 years ago
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  
    • Nephwrack:

      Or Scientist are not so sure of their own work. Guess they have not been using that method so wisely as they should. It is odd that such stories would crop up on th eve of people abusing the system to go to the doctor unnecessarily....a nation of hypochondriac they are trying to avoid.

    • 3 years ago
  • jubal
  • RojoGatto
  • growdude420
    • 0
      growdude420  

    • My mother had TB as a child, she was out of school for an entire year as a result...

      I knew from the beginning that this "swine flu" bullshit was gonna fade away. Now a drug resistant form of TB, that frightens me to my core. You can thank all those doctors who pushed antibiotics, literally, for a century straight. Welcome to the new world of drug resistant strains of the diseases we THOUGHT we had eradicated. This SUCKS, just sucks.

    • 3 years ago
  • Nephwrack
  • J_Jammer
  • mindcruzer
  • boywhocould
  • vernajr
  • mvjesusfreak27
  • Null81
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