Please do cite examples of this. I'd actually like to read the literature on this and learn if TB treatment has been actually changed by co-infection by SARS-CoV2.
Nobody is in the offices right now for me to get my hands on the studies. There is one quite well translated from Thai I will try to get so I ask you to settle for anecdotal purely from observations for the moment. TB is extremely prevalent in most of the third world relative to quality and availability of health care. That is one paper I'll try to get my hands on.
Back in the early 2000s during a serious AIDS epidemic TB was becoming active on a serious scale. A hospital in Mae Rim had over 90% TB opportunity infection rate. HIV-AIDS patients went straight to the respiratory wards.
I believe in 2006 there were several extensive studies done which all appear to be down in Kuala Lumpur at this time at the tropical disease center where they were correlating the opportunity infector incidents with the local epidemics most notably AIDS, Dengue, Hepatitis - all forms, encephalitis, and I forget which others. Cholera and Leptospirosis were also included due to their prevalence in outlying areas where all villages had free ranging chickens and raised hogs.
Again, I'm going by first hand experiences here. There was a white paper which I'm trying to get my hands on that correlated weakened immune system from the common epidemic infections with TB becoming active. (Everyone tests positive for TB presence throughout S.E. Asia).
There are a LOT of studies done on this.
Anyway, obviously any new virus that targets the lungs and or has a significant effect on the immune system is a concern that active TB is almost a given. This paper gives a good general scope of the problem:
About 95% of cases and 98% of deaths due to tuberculosis (TB) occur in tropical countries while, in temperate low incidence countries, a disproportionate portion of TB cases is diagnosed in immigrants. Urbanization, poverty, poor housing conditions ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Esp.
"Despite encouraging progress, the burden of tuberculosis (TB) remains enormous with about one third of the World population latently infected with the etiologic agent Mycobacterium tuberculosis,1 8.7 million new cases of active disease and 1.4 million people died in 2011.2 Some authors state that 95% of all cases and 98% of deaths due to TB, occurs in tropical countries.3 "
Additionally, something I never followed up on. When my sister-in-law contracted dengue, she was moved to a different hospital where they had full respiratory support capabilities and were undertaking an extensive study in the apparently unrelated symptoms of dengue were triggering active TB episodes. She had developed pneumonia around the end of the first week of the dengue developing and was placed in a ward with several other dengue patients. The language barrier coupled with physicians (who spoke English) being present for less than an hour per day made it next to impossible for me to get additional information. A very common problem on getting the low down on anything here.
In reciprocal, if you have any info, links, I''d very much appreciate you posting them.
And something worth bearing in mind here. I'm flying blind nearly all of the time. Operating on ancient paramed skills from the 80's and 90's. Almost no medical professional I meet speaks English, nurses and technicians operate rote by written instructions and them thinking on their feet is most often sternly forbidden. The average pay of a physician is $7 per patient for an initial office visit and nearly all physicians make most of their money as 'used car dealers'. Selling diagnostics in hospitals and getting kickbacks.
This is not the first world cutting edge medical wise. If I want any serious low down on medical issues the most available info is in hospitals down in Bangkok 500 miles away and anything epidemilogical is mostly down in Malaysia.
www.thailandmedical.news
www.who.int
