Back to Search
Start Over
Tuberculosis 'the great imitator': False healing and subclinical activity
- Source :
- Indian Journal of Tuberculosis. 64:345-348
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2017.
-
Abstract
- Tuberculosis is still being a health problem worldwide despite it being a curable disease. Although the only way to prevent its spread is treating cases of active pulmonary disease, we still do not have reliable markers that help us to evaluate the response to anti-tuberculosis drugs. Currently, a patient with negative conversion in the culture of the sputum is considered as cured; however, several studies have questioned the usefulness of this test given that some individuals persist with data of clinical activity despite their negative culture. A couple of recent studies based on sophisticated imaging techniques confirm the above and show us a broader clinical spectrum of the disease, with false healing and subclinical activity in the affected lung tissue even in the absence of symptoms, forcing us to reconsider the way in which we classify tuberculosis and led us to question the efficacy of the current schemes to treat this illness. Here, we comment the findings of these trials and analyze what is their influence in the view of physicians for future applications in diagnosis and/or therapeutics of tuberculosis.
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
medicine.medical_specialty
Tuberculosis
030106 microbiology
The great imitator
Pulmonary disease
Disease
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
03 medical and health sciences
Latent Tuberculosis
Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography
medicine
Humans
Intensive care medicine
Asymptomatic Infections
Tuberculosis, Pulmonary
Subclinical infection
biology
Latent tuberculosis
business.industry
Sputum
biology.organism_classification
medicine.disease
RNA, Bacterial
030104 developmental biology
Infectious Diseases
Immunology
medicine.symptom
business
Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid
Interferon-gamma Release Tests
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00195707
- Volume :
- 64
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Indian Journal of Tuberculosis
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....fde4a7a8271fe637ac45299d606161f2