Experts sound warning on drug-resistant tuberculosis

摘要

An epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in developing nations has experts concerned about how to effectively combat the pathogen, which affects a third of the world's population.rnMichael Iseman, chief of the Clinical Mycobacterial Disease Service of the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, said the drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains that he sees today are not like those that affected patients in decades past.rn"This is not just TB," Iseman said February 23 in Washington, D.C., at an Institute of Medicine forum on the threat of drug-resistant TB. "This is a hot, new, highly virulent, very adaptable organism that . . . has displaced the old, less-competent predator."rnWorldwide, active TB develops in about 8-9 million people each year, and 2 million die from the infection annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).