Tuberculosis infection is transmitted by breathing

The new approach to the disease must be to monitor people who have tuberculosis without waiting for treatment.

A recent study concluded that just breathing may be a major cause of tuberculosis transmission, which may change strategies to contain this disease, which historically focused on its most prominent symptom: sneezing.

This discussion is reminiscent of what happened in the scientific community at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic; Because if the hypothesis of tuberculosis transmission through breathing is confirmed, this means that treating people who have symptoms is not enough to stop the spread of the disease.

In fact, "this leaves room for a significant outbreak of infection before the infected people undergo any treatment," confirmed to AFP, one of the study's authors, Ryan Dinkele of the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Dinkili pointed out that the new approach against the disease should be based on monitoring people who have tuberculosis without waiting for treatment. "If transmission is possible in the absence of any symptoms, this greatly complicates the task," he said.

An infected patient may remain asymptomatic and potentially pass the infection to others for two, three or more years

These findings, which have not yet been reviewed by other scientists, were presented at an international online conference on lung health. Tuberculosis is an infectious part of disease that affects the lungs most of the time, caused by a bacterium known as Mycobacterium Koch's bacillus or tuberculosis, after the name of its disease discoverer.

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis annually, making it the most deadly infectious disease (not including COVID-19).

The organization notes that nearly a quarter of the world's population is infected with bacteria, but only 5 to 15 percent of these people develop the disease, and they mostly live in low to middle income countries.

Medical studies indicate that after infection with the tuberculosis germ, the disease may appear as a primary and active disease directly, and this occurs in 10 percent of people, and it may remain in the body in the form of a latent infection that becomes active at a later time, and this happens in 90 percent of infected people.

The initial infection may not cause any signs or symptoms, and sometimes symptoms may occur. Symptoms of early tuberculosis include fever, which usually appears gradually, and ranges from a low-grade fever to a high-grade fever of up to 39°C, in addition to chest pain that is pleural or that is in the middle of the chest.

Other less common early symptoms of tuberculosis are fatigue, cough, arthralgia, and pharyngitis. The infected patient may remain asymptomatic with the possibility of transmitting the infection to others for two, three or more years, when symptoms usually appear at the end of the disease.