i hope that this disease will stay in south africa, because this disease in our regions will create the same effect as the great plague as in the Middle Ages.
I hope that this disease will have a small port that would give the scientists the oppurtunity to make an antidote.
The idea that this illness will spread as a hurricane, gives me the creeps.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease that can be deadly, but it doesn't always kill. TB used to be so problematic simply because there was nothing to treat it and for a long time people didn't know how it was spread.
Tuberculosis can cause an initial flu-like illness of varying severity. Classic signs include fever that is worse at night (with night sweats), coughing, coughing up blood in some cases, and feeling extremely fatigued. Some people acquire TB without ever feeling much more than a mild cold. It can sit in lungs (or, less commonly, other organs) for years in a dormant pattern before reemerging to cause sickness again when the person's immune system is weak, such as in patients with HIV/AIDS. Clearly, blood loss from coughing up blood or development of a severe infection in the blood stream or even damage to the lungs and other organs can lead to death, but this isn't the case for all people. We just don't want it to be the case for *anyone*.
However, drugs were eventually developed that were effective against TB, including rifampin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, ethambutol, and streptomycin. Some drugs known as quinolones can also be effective. Most TB drug resistance comes from single mutations in one bacterium's DNA. Spawning two resistances in one bacterium is rare, so treating TB with more than one drug at a time makes sure that all the bugs are killed. Obviously, dual-drug therapy was not always followed, especially in impoverished areas like the Third World, where reporting, isolation, and efficient management of outbreaks are also poor. Thus, strains of TB have developed that are drug-resistant or even multi-drug resistant (MDR-TB). We still have medications that can target these, but in the absence of a good microbiology lab to identify which antibiotics will kill the particular strain a patient has, sometimes administration of the medications that are still effective is delayed, allowing more time for them to spread it to others or become sicker. Recently, extremely multi-drug resistant TB has emerged in isolated cases (EX-MDR-TB). Unfortunately, this is resistant to just about all available medications and is essentially untreatable, but also very uncommon. It is so uncommon that individual case reports are BIG news.
In the United States, infection control practices and tight regulations on reporting and treatment of TB have limited the cases in this country to the handfuls in most areas (<5 per 100,000 people). I am not aware of any reported cases of EX-MDR-TB in the United States.
BTW, Lord Klorel you rock. I love Stargate. Curse them for ending SG-1 after this season. At least Atlantis will continue with prospects for another spin-off or continuation of SG-1 by another network.
