Totally drug resistant TB spreading in South Africa

‘Totally drug-resistant’ tuberculosis spreads in South Africa as re...

Drug resistant TB, called atypical Beijing genotype, is spreading outside of Africa to cities such as London.

The world is facing outbreaks of “totally drug-resistant” tuberculosis if explosions of the bacteria in South Africa and other poorer nations are not addressed, according to a new papers published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. At this point, researchers are working to determine how the bacteria gains its invincibility, and how to isolate it.

Fears are mounting in medical communities worldwide that conventional treatments would be useless against the new disease, The Daily Mail‘s health site reports.

Researchers caution that, at this point, with mortality rates among some groups at more than 50%, containment is the goal, and they advocate the use of more specific screening tests so as to more easily isolate patients suffering from the virtually untreatable strain of TB.