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Tuberculosis
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Tuberculosis is one of the world's deadliest diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year more than 8 million new cases of tuberculosis occur, and approximately 3 million people die from the disease. Current diagnosis of Mtb infection is based primarily on bacterial culture of sputum or other respiratory samples. Sample processing requires the release of bacteria from the sputum and treatment with decontaminating agents, such as harsh detergents, to inactivate the rapidly growing non-mycobacteria organisms present in these samples. Unfortunately, these treatments can ... kill up to 90% of the target mycobacteria, significantly limiting the sensitivity and reliability of these methods. This grant proposes to develop a simplified device for collecting sputum samples and PCT processing to release the bacteria and preferentially inactivate the non-mycobacteria species.
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Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborne infection caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Although TB primarily affects the lungs, other organs and tissues may be affected as well. After decades of decline, the incidence of TB began increasing again in 1985. By 1992, the incidence had increased over 20 percent. Starting in 1992... the trend reversed, and the rate began to decline. The estimated decline in the number of reported tuberculosis cases was 34 percent between 1992 and 1999.
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Tuberculosis spread much more widely in Europe when the industrial revolution began in the late nineteenth century. The disease became widespread somewhat later in the United States, because the movement of the population to large cities made overcrowded housing so common. When streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against M. tuberculosis, was discovered in the early 1940s, the infection began to come under control. Although other more effective anti-tuberculosis drugs were developed in the following decades, the number of cases of TB in the United States began to rise again in the mid-1980s. This upsurge was in part again a result of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in the poor areas of large cities, prisons, and homeless shelters. Infected visitors and immigrants to the United Stateshave ... contributed to the resurgence of TB.
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Tuberculosis kills more people each year than all of the other infectious diseases combined and millions of people will die this year because of TB. Tuberculosis (TB) is a highly contagious disease transmitted through the air contaminated with droplets released from the lungs. TB strikes people in their most productive years, ages 15 to 44. Of the 2 billion people infected with TB, 200 million worldwide will develop active TB and then be able to infect others. The key to controlling the spread of TB is accurate and fast diagnosis so that treatment can begin. Testing for TB has become mandatory when related to immigration in most countries.
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Tuberculosis was popularly known as consumption for a long time. Scientists know it as an infection caused by M. tuberculosis. In 1882, the microbiologist Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus, at a time when one of every seven deaths in Europe was caused by TB. Because antibiotics were unknown, the only means of controlling the spread of infection was to isolate patients in private sanitoria or hospitals limited to patients with TB-a practice that continues to this day in many countries. The net effect of this pattern of treatment was to separate the study of tuberculosis from mainstream medicine. Entire organizations were set up to study not only the disease as it affected individual patients, but its impact on the society as a whole.
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Tuberculosis has been present in humans since antiquity, as the origins of the disease are in the first domestication of cattle (which ... gave humanity viral poxes). Skeletal remains show prehistoric humans (4000 BC) had TB and tubercular decay has been found in the spines of Egyptian mummiesfrom 3000-2400 BC. There were references to TB in Indiaaround 2000 BC, and indications of lung scarring identical to that of modern-day TB sufferers in preserved bodies (such as mummies) suggests that TB was present in The Americasfrom about 2000 BC
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Tuberculosis