Friday, August 12, 2011

Are all strains tuberculosis contagious

Are all strains tuberculosis contagious?
I'm doing some research on tuberculosis for a possible character in a story. (Creating a story for creative writing class) Anyways, I did find out that there are different bacteria that cause tuberculosis. Are all of the different bacteria that can cause tuberculosis contagious or just Mycobacterium tuberculosis?
Infectious Diseases - 2 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
http://www.who.int/tb/publications/2008/factsheet_april08.pdf Facts on TB from the World Health Org. http://www.stoptb.org/resource_center/assets/factsheets/XDR-FAQ1s.pdf Fact Sheet from stopTB I would also look up XDR-TB. Newer drug resistant strand.
2 :
There are two questions here, which I will answer separately. 1. Can different bacteria/mycobacteria cause tuberculosis? Yes, but almost all cases of tuberculosis are caused by one specific bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. There are other mycobacteria, that can cause tuberculosis as well, such as Mycobacterium bovis, and Mycobacterium microti, but these cases are rare. All of these tuberculosis-causing bacteria are closely related to each other and differ in specific laboratory tests. 2. Are the bacteria that cause tuberculosis contagious? Yes, all of these bacteria can be contagious, meaning that if one person is ill, the disease can "jump" to another person. In tuberculosis that will specifically happen if the ill person coughs up. The droplets in the cough can enter another persons lungs and thus cause disease. But tuberculosis is not very contagious. It will cause disease in only 10% of the people that are in close contact with the patient (e.g. spouse). Most other contact persons will develop no disease at all, or a latent (hidden) form of the disease, in which e.g. the bacterium can be found in the contact person, but the person is not sick at all. Good luck with your story! It sounds very cool

Read more discussions :