Tuberculosis is transmitted through coughing and breathing in particles from an infected person’s lungs. It can lie dormant for years before symptoms appear, but can be treated with medication. Delayed treatment can lead to fatal consequences, especially for those with weakened immune systems.
Transmission of tuberculosis occurs much like many common colds. The most common method of transmission is when one person coughs and another person breathes in particles that have been expelled from the coughing person’s lungs. Exposure to airborne bacteria from an infected person does not necessarily guarantee transmission of TB, and many people can easily fight off TB without ever getting sick. For those who get sick, it is common for the disease to lie dormant for a long time. The chances of transmitting tuberculosis increase in people with immune system disorders such as autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
In the 1800s and earlier, tuberculosis was a very dangerous disease. It killed many people around the world in those days, in part because there generally wasn’t a reliable way to cure the disease and people didn’t fully understand how it was transmitted. Transmission of tuberculosis was more common in those times, not because the disease was more contagious, but because there were generally more people walking around with severe infections and passing it on to others with coughs.
Tuberculosis can progress in several ways, but the most common method is hibernation in a person’s body. After a long period, which can sometimes be years, the symptoms of tuberculosis will appear. These can include constant coughing, wasting, coughing up blood, and unexplained sweating. For some people, symptoms may appear within a few weeks of transmission, but this is relatively rare.
Once a person has been diagnosed with TB, a relatively reliable treatment option is available. Treatment can be quite complex because several medications are often involved and must be taken at very specific times during the day. If patients make mistakes in medication timing or miss doses, they can potentially throw their entire treatment plan off track temporarily. Another thing that makes treatment difficult is that it often takes several months of following the strict medication plan to ensure the disease goes away.
If people wait too long after symptoms appear to seek treatment, TB can become much more dangerous. When left untreated, tuberculosis is still a potentially fatal disease. Among poor populations, tuberculosis is still often fatal, and it can also be very difficult for doctors to treat individuals with other health problems, such as AIDS, for example, which could damage their immune systems.
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