Tuberculosis: Types And Treatment

Tuberculosis refers to an infectious disease associated with the lungs, which is mostly caused by bacteria. There are two forms of tuberculosis. These are pulmonary tuberculosis and extra-pulmonary tuberculosis. There are various forms of each as well.

Here are the possible treatments for both pulmonary and extra-pulmonary tuberculosis:

What is pulmonary tuberculosis?

Pulmonary tuberculosis is a type of disease in which bacteria invades your lungs. It is possible that the bacteria in your lungs could just kill you. However, fortunately if you have been taking the right medicines for your bacterial infection you can get cured immediately. The name of the bacteria which causes tuberculosis is known as the Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, mycobacterium tuberculosis can attack other parts of the body as well. When this happens, it is known as extra-pulmonary tuberculosis.

What is extra-pulmonary tuberculosis?

Extra-pulmonary tuberculosis is when tuberculosis occurs to parts of the body other than the lungs. There are many parts of the body which tuberculosis can occur to including the lymph nodes, the nervous system as well as the bone and joints. Luckily, it is easily curable.

Treatment for Pulmonary tuberculosis treatment

Firstly, it is worth noting that latent tuberculosis has no symptoms and there is no way you can pass it to another person either. However, it is still crucial that you take treatment for it as well. If you do not complete your treatment then your tuberculosis will progress to a very dangerous form of tuberculosis. This is known as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is sometimes abbreviated to MD-R TB. There are plenty of medicines which people are recommended to cure tuberculosis. These include:

1. Isoniazid
2. Rifampin
3. Ethambutol
4. Pyrazinamide

Treatment for Extra-pulmonary tuberculosis

Extra-pulmonary tuberculosis has pretty much the same symptoms as pulmonary tuberculosis. This is because extra-pulmonary tuberculosis is the exact same disease which occurs to the patient, it is just that it affects a different body part. Therefore, the exact treatment recommended for pulmonary tuberculosis can be used to cure extra-pulmonary tuberculosis.