Science / Medicine : TB Spreads Fast in HIV Patients

Tuberculosis, a lung disease that usually takes years to develop, can appear quickly and spread rapidly in people infected with the AIDS virus, according to research presented last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Charles L. Daley of San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center and his colleagues concluded that tuberculosis took less than four months to spread through 12 of the 31 residents of a housing facility for people infected with the AIDS virus, HIV.

“If there is even suggestive evidence of active tuberculosis,” the researchers said, “therapy with multiple drugs should be initiated until the situation is clarified.” AIDS-infected people are vulnerable to tuberculosis, which eats away at the lungs, because AIDS cripples the immune system that helps keep the disease at bay. When a person with AIDS develops tuberculosis, it is important for doctors to look for the disease in other AIDS-infected people who have been in contact with the person with TB, the researchers concluded.

Only about 8% of healthy people exposed to TB normally develop an infection.