TB

The BBC is reporting that an untreatable strain of TB is a ticking time bomb. When I was at school we were all given a BCG injection (I never did find out what it stood for) as an inoculation against TB. What I would like to know from any medical professionals out there is will that BCG keel me immune from this new TB strain..

reply to post by hotel1


I would imagine if this current strain is "untreatable" than no, any previous inoculations would not be helpful. But, I am not a doctor so I guess my opinion is not really valid.

Here is a thread I made a few months ago on this topic:Doctors Struggling to Fight 'Totally Drug-Resistant' Tuberculosis in South Africa

reply to post by hotel1

Answer to your question: Yes and no. First inoculation is only 80% effective and that is for appx. a 12-15 year period. 80% is pretty good....no?
Second. It is more effective in some areas [nations] than others, which means that some Strains of this organism may be resistant to the inoculation. It simply is not known for sure....
Third: the new strains are resistant due to people not completing the original prescribed medications resulting in a "resistant" strain... or super bug. And your resistance does depend on the inoculation you received and when...

I have worked with TB, and can tell you only that I have no idea if inoculations work against super strains as they are rare in the US. However common sense would tell me that if a strain mutates from something that it was inoculated against then it may or may not work. So ..answer maybe or maybe not...my opinion..not
..........If you have been seriously exposed to a resistant strain, please ..please do follow all guidelines by your Dr. Otherwise, others could become infected.
In short. There should be concern.
Be Safe. It is always best not to be exposed. But if exposed you can be tested.
These super strains are serious and should not be taken lightly.
[I am a health care professional and this advice is good only if it is heeded]
There are no herbs, incantations, or special treatments for this. It is cut and dried.
It is treated only with the proper medical intervention. Note that many have been successfully treated that have been infected with resistant strains, but the intervention is very involved.
DH

reply to post by DavidsHope


Thank you for your reply I am far from reassured but it is good of you to bring your specific knowledge to this thread. One ray of hope is that I may be able to make a fortune reopening sanatoriums.

Kind regards

reply to post by hotel1

Sorry: Your right I did not reassure you. I should have because the resistant strains are quite rare. And resistance with inoculation does last 12-15 years for non resistant strains.
Point is that the resistant strains are quite rare. Probably more chance of getting gout.
Only wanted to point out that if you were exposed you should be tested and treated because treatment is not futile even in resistant strains. You can recover. It only takes time.

S&F for your concerns and thread...

If a strain becomes untreatable, it is immune or resistant to various artificial methods of treatment such as antibiotics - this antibiotic resistance arises from bacteria colonies developing and sharing small pieces of DNA called plasmids, which give the bacterium cells a method to disrupt or negate the attacking antibiotic. This happens, as DavidsHope said, because of people not completing their prescribed cause of antibiotics.

If bacteria strains develop resistance as outlined above, it means that if you catch the disease, we have no way of helping you fight it. You are on your own. Antibiotics do nothing to prevent you catching TB.

The BCG jab you received was a vaccine. Vaccines work differently to antibiotics as they provide a kickstart to your immune system. The effectiveness of a vaccine is not dependent on minor variations within a strain - if a vaccine works on strain X, it will always work on strain X no matter how resistant strain X has become. It will not however, prevent you from catching strain Y which is not antibiotic resistant, but was originally strain X.

What I'm saying is, you will (probably) not catch whatever it is you've been vaccinated against. The BCG was designed to vaccinate you against the most drug resistant forms of TB. If you catch any strain of TB right now, it will probably be a non-resistant one which is easily treated with antibiotics, thanks to your vaccination.

Final thought: there is no truly "unkillable" disease - the only problem is that we can't inject ourselves with bleach. We do have some toxic antibiotics, which are very powerful and will kill even extremely resistant bacteria, but we don't like to use them because they require hospital stays and constant monitoring of the patient because they're a bit toxic. We're also trying to cut down on the variety of antibiotics we use to stop resistant plasmids cropping up everywhere. We do have the firepower to eradicate TB if we need it, it's just not cost effective right now.