Tuberculosis: a narrative review on epidemiology, risks, implications, preventions and treatments
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20241585Keywords:
Tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Prevention, Multi-drug therapy, Drug resistanceAbstract
Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborne disease that generally affects the pulmonary portion of the human body leading to severe coughing, fever and chest pain. It is caused by a bacterium known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which kills human beings each and every year globally more than the death toll of combined HIV and malaria. However, it is preventable, treatable, and curable. The world is suffering due to this dreaded disease with an approximate number of 11 million TB cases and 1.6 million deaths annually. Tuberculosis increases the public health attention because of its high mortality rates after HIV/AIDS. World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centre for Chronic Disease Control (CCDC) are the leading organizations playing an important role to combat against TB by publishing proper health guidelines and treatments through reliable awareness campaigns whenever there is sudden outbreaks of TB, COVID-19 and related diseases. A wide range of research findings, clinical reports and new treatment methods like multi-drug therapy have been developed to combat TB. It is still necessary to develop new research and innovative ideas and proper implementations of the treatment and prevention guidelines of WHO and CCDC to fight against this fatal disease. In countries having higher increase of populations due to immunosuppressed chronic diseases like HIV, diabetes and pandemics like COVID-19, eradication of TB infection is a very difficult and challenging task. This mini review is based on the critical analyses of the data available from the official websites of WHO (Global Tuberculosis Report), CCDC, and search engines like Medline, PubMed, Google Scholar, and research findings of selected articles, textbooks were used as additional sources which are cited in the reference section.
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