Tuberculosis Update

US TB rate falls, but remains higher than eradication goal. Bloomberg News (3/25, Larkin) reports that tuberculosis cases in the US "dropped to a record low last year, while falling short of the goal to eradicate the bacterial infection." According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly "3.6 TB cases were reported for every 100,000 Americans, a decline of 3.9 percent from the prior year and the lowest since national reporting began in 1953." Notably in 1989, the CDC predicted TB would be eradicated "from the US by 2010." But the increase in cases "tied to HIV in the 1990s and difficulty in lowering the rate of infection" among people born in other countries has "prevented this target from being reached," the agency said. The data, released to "coincide with World TB Day," are published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. According to HealthDay (3/24, Reinberg), the data showed that the TB rate was 11 times higher "among those born outside the US. 'That's 60 percent of the cases,'" said study co-author, Dr. Kenneth G. Castro, director of the CDC's Division of TB Elimination. He explained that eradicating TB is defined as "no more than one case per 1,000,000 people. ... 'The rate we have now is 36 times higher than that,'" noted Dr. Castro. The Los Angeles Times (3/24, Maugh) "Booster Shots" blog reported that more that 50 percent of the 6,707 TB cases in foreign-born residents were among people born in "Mexico (23%), the Philippines (11%), India (8.6%) and Vietnam (7.7%)." Although the TB rates declined in some states, the data showed that "California, Texas, New York and Florida" accounted for a "total of 5,503 cases" (49.2%). According to MedPage Today (3/24, Smith), the data indicated that the TB rate per 100,000 among Asians is 22.5, among blacks, 7.0, among Hispanics, 6.5, and among whites, "0.9 cases." Medscape (3/24, Kling) noted that HIV-positive individuals are "at high risk for TB. Of 7,090 people in the US with TB and a known HIV status in 2010, 611 (8.6%) were coinfected with HIV." The CDC report also highlighted "issues with multidrug-resistant TB, which is resistant to at least two first-line therapies (isoniazid and rifampin)." MDR-TB cases represented "1.3% (113 cases) of all TB cases in 2009 (data are not yet available for 2010)." Meanwhile, CDC officials said the new data "emphasize the importance of treating TB as a global health problem." According to the World Health Organization, about "one third of the world's population is infected" with TB.