Tuberculosis: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment

Running head: MEDICAL ASSIGNMENT
TUBERCULOSIS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1MEDICAL ASSIGNMENT
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is a communicable or infectious disease which is caused by a single
pathogenic bacteria and as per the World Health Organisation or WHO (2018), is one of the life-
threatening disease around the world. As per the report provided by WHO, more than 10 million
people were affected with tuberculosis in the year 2017, within which 1.6 million people died
(WHO, 2018). The causes, mode of transmission, symptoms, treatment and complications of this
disease are as follows.
Cause
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the pathogenic bacteria which causes active tuberculosis
and it spreads through air when an infected individual coughs, sneezes, spits or talks. It has been
determined that the probability of acquiring tuberculosis from a stranger is lower than a known
person (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). This is because a longer incubation
period is required to develop the symptoms of tuberculosis and hence a close contact with active
TB carrier is required to develop the disease condition (Medical News Today, 2018).
Mode of transmission
Droplet nuclei generated from an infected person is the primary reason that leads to
tuberculosis in susceptible person. Airborne droplets exhaled by infected individual carries the
pathogenic bacteria and transmitted to people who are susceptible to it (Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 2019). It is evident through researches that the air-droplets released from
the infected individual are virulent for 4 to 5 hours however, the infection does not spread
through Surface contact (Medical News Today, 2018).

2MEDICAL ASSIGNMENT
Symptoms and complications
Tuberculosis can be present within the host body in both active and latent phase, however
in latent phase no symptoms of the disease are developed. In the active phase, the symptoms are:
 Cough, that lasts more than a month
 extreme weight loss and loss of appetite
 fever with high chills and sweating at night
 chest heaviness and pain with fatigue
 coughing with blood or sputum (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
2019)
The sever complication of untreated tuberculosis could be seen through the report of
Who as more than 1.6 million people died in 2017 from tuberculosis in both developed and
developing nations. On the other hand, besides lungs, the TB bacteria can colonize in bones,
brain, kidney, heart and lever causing meningitis, kidney or liver disorder as well as visual
impairment (Medical News Today, 2018).
Treatment
Tuberculosis could be treated if specific antibiotic is provided to the patient for a
prescribed length of time for complete removal of infectious load of pathogen (Horsburgh Jr,
Barry III & Lange, 2013). Further, latent phase of tuberculosis requires one type of antibiotic,
whereas the active infection requires multiple antibiotics which need to be consumed in an
immediate manner so that the combined effect could be used for infection control and removal.
Generally a Directly Observed Therapy or DOT is used to provide timely and accurate treatment
to the affected individuals (Wallis et al., 2016).