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Friday, Mar. 27, 2009

Tuberculosis infections continue in Merced County despite efforts at eradication

It's a deadly disease that kills more than 2 million people worldwide every year.

Tuberculosis brings images to most people's minds of people locked away in sanitariums, but in reality, the disease often sends patients to the hospital for months.

Although tuberculosis is usually a disease of overcrowded, malnourished people, there is tuberculosis in Merced, although it's on the wane.

The disease usually shows up in the lungs, according to Dr. John Paik-Tesch, interim program director for the family practice residency program at Mercy Medical Center Merced.

"It usually takes three or four different antibiotics to treat it," Paik-Tesch said.

Katie Albertson, spokeswoman for Merced County, said there were five cases of tuberculosis in 2008 and 2007, nine in 2006, and eight in 2005.

Although those numbers seem small, tuberculosis is almost nonexistent in many states. Worldwide, the disease takes a life every 20 seconds, and India ranks No. 1 for incidence of TB, with 168 people contracting it per 100,000. Merced County had two people diagnosed per 100,000 in 2008.

If a person is diagnosed with tuberculosis, a long stay in the hospital may be in their future, Paik-Tesch said. Many cases of TB look like pneumonia, and the disease isn't diagnosed until a person comes to a doctor or hospital for an X-ray.

In the hospital, TB patients are put in isolation, Paik-Tesch said. The disease is spread through the air, and precautions are needed to keep it from spreading.

"If a person has the disease, we test family members because it is so contagious," Paik-Tesch said.

Some people may test positive for TB, but don't have an active disease. Paik-Tesch said TB can flare up when a person is stressed, as from malnutrition. But people who do test positive are treated for six to 12 months to make sure the disease never becomes active.

Some of the symptoms of TB include a cough, blood-tinged saliva or mucus, weight loss, shortness of breath and chest pains, Paik-Tesch said.

"Unfortunately, TB can look like a lot of other things," he said. "It can look just like pneumonia."

Although the rates of TB have gone down in the county, Merced still has a higher rate than most areas of the country do because of the influx of immigrants during the past 20 years.

"It's going to take a worldwide effort to eradicate it," Paik-Tesch said. "It's been with us for tens of thousands of years -- and it's not going away soon."

Reporter Carol Reiter can be reached at (209) 385-2486 or creiter@mercedsun-star.com.

Video: Tuberculosis, the silent killer