TB infection is due to the inhalation of this nasty bacteria into the lungs.
The rate of infection is related to the "load" of bacteria inhaled and frequency.
If you are in close proximity to an infected person who coughs a lot, you will likely inhale a bacteria.
Coughing and close proximity are the primary determinants for infection.
Other than severly malnourished people there are no studies which have been able to show a correlation between nutrition and infection.
There is a slightly higher rate among patients who've had their stomach removed (like for ulcers or cancer) and among patients who've had intestinal bypass for obesity.
In the very large study of infectivity, (done by the Navy) men who were too thin had a higher infection rate.
There may be a small genetic component. Fewer cases in Danes, higher cases in Eskimos and Filipinos.
HIV, which is a virus that destroys T-cell mediated immune function raises the risk for infection.
Research has not shown that diet or nutrition in the average person makes any difference. TB is a nasty bug. One viable bug in a small drop of moisture from a cough inhaled into your lung and you're infected.
The drug resistant TB oddly enough is less likely to infect you, but if you are infected, the drugs are tougher.
In developed countries the rate of TB is down, primarily due to antibiotics, soap and water, and less crowded living conditions.
mm
Tb Tid Bits
Started by
maineman
, May 31 2007 11:32 AM
2 replies to this topic
#1
maineman
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maineman
#2
stocks
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Posted 31 May 2007 - 01:06 PM
... decline in tuberculosis mortality
In Szreter's new interpretation of the data, public health measures such as clean water and milk supplies assumed greater importance, while changing social conditions, to which McKeown had attributed beneficial effects such as improvements in nutrition, were in fact a detrimental influence, resulting in, for example, overcrowded and poorly constructed housing resulting from rapid urbanization.
The consensus among most historians about the McKeown thesis a quarter century after it first stirred controversy is that one narrow aspect of it was correct—that curative medical measures played little role in mortality decline prior to the mid-20th century
More recently, Amy Fairchild and Gerald Oppenheimer made the case that McKeown had insufficiently explored the effect on tuberculosis rates of 2 public health interventions, quarantine of infected people and eradication of the bovine form of the illness (responsible for transmission through contaminated milk).
Although McKeown's formulation of this question achieved unusually wide visibility, for the reasons discussed above, he was not the first to raise it. His work represented a reframing of a much older debate, dating to the latter part of the 19th century, between sanitary reformers devoted to improving social conditions in the broadest sense and germ theorists dedicated to controlling disease through the sophisticated tools of bacteriology. Far from fading in prominence, the questions he raised have assumed new salience at the beginning of the 21st century, especially in debates about how best to confront health threats such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in the developing world. For example, commenting on the recent initiative to provide AIDS drugs in poor nations, a health activist based in Nepal summed up the 2 sides of this debate when he noted, "There has been an overemphasis . . . [on] drugs. The lack of drinking water is a much bigger priority in most countries than anti-retroviral treatments."
A large and growing body of research suggesting that broad social conditions must be addressed in order to effect meaningful and long-term improvements in the health of populations has validated the underlying premise of McKeown's inquiries.36–39 This research challenges public health professionals to view targeted interventions and social change, not as dichotomous or opposing choices, but rather as essential complements to each other, and to find ways to integrate technical preventive and curative measures with more broad-based efforts to improve all of the conditions in which people live. These concepts, which lie at the heart of the McKeown thesis, account in large measure for its continuing resonance in the field of public health. McKeown's work, empirically flawed though it may have been, placed before a wide audience a set of practical and ethical challenges with which policymakers in the United States and internationally will continue to grapple in the coming decades.
http://www.ajph.org/...t/full/92/5/725
In Szreter's new interpretation of the data, public health measures such as clean water and milk supplies assumed greater importance, while changing social conditions, to which McKeown had attributed beneficial effects such as improvements in nutrition, were in fact a detrimental influence, resulting in, for example, overcrowded and poorly constructed housing resulting from rapid urbanization.
The consensus among most historians about the McKeown thesis a quarter century after it first stirred controversy is that one narrow aspect of it was correct—that curative medical measures played little role in mortality decline prior to the mid-20th century
More recently, Amy Fairchild and Gerald Oppenheimer made the case that McKeown had insufficiently explored the effect on tuberculosis rates of 2 public health interventions, quarantine of infected people and eradication of the bovine form of the illness (responsible for transmission through contaminated milk).
Although McKeown's formulation of this question achieved unusually wide visibility, for the reasons discussed above, he was not the first to raise it. His work represented a reframing of a much older debate, dating to the latter part of the 19th century, between sanitary reformers devoted to improving social conditions in the broadest sense and germ theorists dedicated to controlling disease through the sophisticated tools of bacteriology. Far from fading in prominence, the questions he raised have assumed new salience at the beginning of the 21st century, especially in debates about how best to confront health threats such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in the developing world. For example, commenting on the recent initiative to provide AIDS drugs in poor nations, a health activist based in Nepal summed up the 2 sides of this debate when he noted, "There has been an overemphasis . . . [on] drugs. The lack of drinking water is a much bigger priority in most countries than anti-retroviral treatments."
A large and growing body of research suggesting that broad social conditions must be addressed in order to effect meaningful and long-term improvements in the health of populations has validated the underlying premise of McKeown's inquiries.36–39 This research challenges public health professionals to view targeted interventions and social change, not as dichotomous or opposing choices, but rather as essential complements to each other, and to find ways to integrate technical preventive and curative measures with more broad-based efforts to improve all of the conditions in which people live. These concepts, which lie at the heart of the McKeown thesis, account in large measure for its continuing resonance in the field of public health. McKeown's work, empirically flawed though it may have been, placed before a wide audience a set of practical and ethical challenges with which policymakers in the United States and internationally will continue to grapple in the coming decades.
http://www.ajph.org/...t/full/92/5/725
-- -
Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change,
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change,
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
#3
maineman
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maineman
Posted 31 May 2007 - 01:32 PM
Decreasing population density (suburban migration from crowded inner cities during the mid 20th century)
Clean water
Soap
Covering your mouth when you cough
Tissues (disposable) instead of pocket handkerchiefs
Science and the development of antibiotics
This is what has worked. This is what will work in poorer and developing countries.
mm
