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TB Introduction


Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease mainly caused by Mycobacterium Tuberculosis that usually attacks the lungs, but can attack almost any part of the body (in brain it makes Tubeculomas, that is a major cause of Epilepsy). It is spread from person to person through the air. Someone who is infected with TB has the TB germs, or bacteria, in their body. The body's defenses are protecting them from the germs and they remain a-symptomatic for a long time till the body's defense (vital forces) remains strong. Such persons will not infect the other persons.

Clinical Picture

A person with TB infection will have no symptoms. A person with TB disease may have any, all or none of the following symptoms: cough off and on for a long period, feeling tired all the time, weight loss, loss of appetite, fever (mild to moderate), coughing up blood, night sweats and chest pain for nearly one month. These symptoms can also occur with other types of lung disease so it is important to investigate the case properly.
There are three group of symptoms usually finds in TB cases.
  1. Those due to the systemic effect of the disease which include lassitude and malaise, impairment of appetite, loss of weight, anaemia, sweating especially during sleep, pyrexia and tachycardia. Absence of these symptoms does not necessarily mean that the disease is inactive. It is known as a dormant stage of the disease.
  2. Those caused by the local effects of tubercular lesions. Depending on the site of lesion symptoms varies from patient to patient: cough is more when there is an involvement of the air passage.
  3. Those caused by the nature of the disease: inflammatory lesions produce acute conditions means more febrile symptoms.

WHAT IS THE CONVENTIONAL TREATMENT FOR TB?

Treatment for TB depends on whether a person has TB disease or only TB infection. A person who has become infected with TB, but does not have TB disease, may be given preventive therapy. Preventive therapy aims to kill germs that are not doing any damage right now, but could break out later. If a doctor decides a person should have preventive therapy, the usual prescription is a daily dose of isoniazid (also called "INH"), an inexpensive TB medicine. The person takes INH for six months (up to a year for some patients), with periodic checkups to make sure the medicine is being taken as prescribed.What if the person has TB disease? Then treatment is needed. The patient usually gets a combination of several drugs (most frequently INH plus two to three others), usually for six to nine months. The patient will probably begin to feel better only a few weeks after starting to take the drugs.It is very important, however, that the patient continue to take the medicine correctly for the full length of treatment. If the medicine is taken incorrectly or stoppedthe patient may become sick again and will be able to infect others with TB.If the medicine is taken incorrectly and the patient becomes sick with TB a second time, the TB may be harder to treat because it has become drug resistant. Multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB is very dangerous, so patients should be sure that they take all of their medicine correctly. It is resistant to available ATT only not to homeopathy. Though it is very difficult to treat a case of MDR TB through homoeopathy, yet an experienced homeopath can make MDR TB patient free from the disease.