Tuberculosis

Ratting Out TB: Scientists Train Rodents To Diagnose Disease

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:31:00 +0000

Rats are notorious for spreading nasty diseases. Think the plague, lassa fever and even salmonella.

But could some jumbo-size African rodents help health workers diagnose diseases more quickly? They just might.

A group in Tanzania is training rats to detect tuberculosis in people. The critters in question are African giant pouched rats. They are about twice the size of your average house gerbil — and half as pretty.

The critters have very poor vision, which they make up for with a keen sense of smell.

Why Finding A TB Test Got Hard

Nancy Shute — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:04:00 +0000

Hospitals and public health departments around the country are having a tough time coming up with a staple of preventive health care: the skin test for tuberculosis.

The shortage, caused by problems at a factory in Canada, is prompting suspension of routine TB testing around the country.

People often have to get the test, called a PPD test, before enrolling in school, and it's also often required annually for people who work i

Tuberculosis Cases In The U.S. Keep Sliding

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:29:00 +0000

The U.S. is slowly but steadily closing in on tuberculosis.

For the first time since the government started tracking the disease in the 1950s, the number of annual TB cases has dropped below 10,000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

TB cases declined 6 percent last year compared to 2011, the report said, making it the 20th consecutive year cases of the disease has fallen.

A Man's Journey From Nepal To Texas Triggers Global TB Scramble

Richard Knox — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:15:00 +0000

We don't know too much about a Nepalese man who's in medical isolation in Texas while being treated for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, the most difficult-to-treat kind. Health authorities are keen to protect his privacy.

But we do know that he traveled through 13 countries — from South Asia to somewhere in the Persian Gulf to Latin America — before he entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in late November.

Despite Rocky Economy, Money For Global Health Remains Solid

Michaeleen Doucleff — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 15:06:00 +0000

Given the world's economic troubles, you'd probably expect money to fight HIV and other illnesses around the world to have plummeted in the past few years.

But foreign aid for global health held steady in 2011 and 2012, hovering right around $28 billion a year, a report published Wednesday finds.

Just to put this number in perspective, that's about 3 percent of what the U.S.