Monday, August 8, 2011

How exactly does tuberculosis kill

How exactly does tuberculosis kill?
I KNOW it destroys tissue causing organ failure, usually in the lungs. So DONT tell me "you die by suffocating" I want to know how having TB bacteria in your cells results in tissue death. What does the bacteria do to kill the cells? Is it simply the inflammatory response killing your own cells? Irv, M. tuberculosis does not produce any toxins
Medicine - 4 Answers
Random Answers, Critics, Comments, Opinions :
1 :
The cells reproduce and take over your body, immagrants such as people from india brought it to the uk but only 462 people die from it out of 1,000 we learnt about this is science :D
2 :
Bacteria don't enter cells, - that's viruses. In general: Bacteria kill and eat cells by releasing enzymes that 'digest' the cell and allow the bacteria to absorb the nutrients released. Since those enzymes destroy tissue they are poisons. The higher the number of bacteria living in the body, the greater the concentration of those poisons in the blood. When the body can no longer deal with the poison, (mostly through liver and kidneys), organs begin to fail and the body dies. With T.B., the lung damage also weakens the whole body, and it may well die from inability to oxygenate the blood before the toxicity kills.
3 :
Yeah, the host's inflammatory response has a lot to do with it in addition to the caseating necrosis that occurs at the pulmonary level. Here is a nice paper which discusses it about half way down: http://www.meddean.luc.edu/lumen/MedEd/elective/pulmonary/tb/tb_f.htm
4 :
one thing that was drilled into my head- TB causes a granulomatous inflammation and you are right these granuloms are caused by inflammation process by the activity of macrophages and activated helper T cells. the bacterium causes cell mediated response. there are release of cytokines that destroy the tissue causing caseous necrosis as was mentioned above

Read more discussions :