Tuberculosis- Treatment And Prevention

Tuberculosis- often known as TB is a contagious infection which is caused by a pathogen called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis mostly affects the lungs of human body, but it can also affect various other organs in the lymphatic system, circulatory system and central nervous system.

When the person gets infected with tuberculosis, the bacteria within the lungs grow faster and cause Pneumonia along with prolonged cough, chest pain and coughing with blood. According to the medical dictionary of MediLexicon, TB is "A specific disease caused by infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the tubercle bacillus, which can affect almost any tissue or organ of the body, the most common site of the disease being the lungs."

Medications are the keystone of Tuberculosis (TB) treatment. But the treatment for tuberculosis takes much longer time than any other bacterial virus. The patients of tuberculosis can take medications and antibiotics for at least a period of seven to nine months. The duration of treatment and drugs may vary depending on your overall health, drug resistance, age and the form of infection (active or latent TB).

The recent studies propose that a three months treatment schedule along with other medications can be effective instead of nine months treatment. With a shorter treatment course, people will possibly take all their prescribed medicines thus chances of getting side effects would automatically decrease. The most common drugs for TB include; Pyrazinamide, isoniazid and Ethambutol.

Bentham Science eBook, ‘Tuberculosis Treatment: The search for new drugs’ covers a wide range of topics that are related to TB drug discovery. The e-book begins with historical information about Tuberculosis discovery and treatment and explores modern treatment strategies, formulations (synthetic and natural) and class of compounds. The extraction of important drugs from various sources is also covered in separate chapters along with information about promising drugs undergoing clinical testing. For further Details, you can visit: http://www.benthamscience.com/ebooks/9781608057887/index.htm.