<p>So apparently in India in the last few days they’ve found 12 people with totally drug resistant tuberculosis. It has a 100% mortality rate and is extremely contagious. The best part is one of the patients left and they have no idea where he is so he’s probably out infecting other people.</p>
<p>It is not surprising that a disease like tuberculosis will be seen in a different form that is resistant to the drugs we use. However, new drugs are created everyday, and to be quite honest, I really doubt that they’ve managed to test the disease against every known drug. Being from India, I can safely say that news here is not always properly authenticated.</p>
<p>Well its not the first time they’ve found totally drug resistant TB. They found it in Iran in 2009 and I don’t think they ever actually found a drug to cure that either they just quarantined the patients and they died. There are strains that are resistant to TB, there are strains that are multiple drug resistant, there are strains that are extensively drug resistant, and there are strains that are totally resistant. When a strain is totally resistant we don’t have any drug that can cure it. These patients were treated for multiple drug resistant TB using second line drugs but they didn’t take their medicine correctly and now they are resistant to all the second line drugs and all of the first line (the strongest antibiotics we have) drugs. The lab they were tested in was one of the few labs that actually is certified by the WHO to test these TB drugs.</p>
<p>You seem to really know what you’re talking about and so I’m sorry for my skeptic remarks. I don’t actually know much about this and it’s pretty interesting actually.</p>