Tuberculosis-like diseases

Mycobacterium is a genus of bacteria that has characteristic cell walls and unusual staining properties. AIDS patients are most commonly infected with an atypical form of tuberculosis bacterium called Mycobacterium avium inter-cellulare. This bacterium does not normally cause disease in healthy people, but in AIDS patients, it may cause tuberculosis-like disease in the lungs. The infection can also involve numerous other tissues, such as the bone marrow, and bacteria may be present in the blood at very high levels. Patients with this opportunistic infection will have fevers and low number of white blood cells. These infections are often resistant to drugs. 

McCoy GW, Chapin CW. Studies of plague, a plague-like disease, and tuberculosis among rodents in California. Public Health Bull. 1912 53 3-23. 

Named after Thomas Addison who first described the clinical condition in the mid 1850s, Addison s disease is one of the commonest endocrinopathies. At one time, most cases of Addison s were due to infection, usually by tuberculosis, of the adrenal cortex but nowadays the likely cause is autoimmune destruction of the tissue, and may be associated with dysfunction of other endocrine glands. 

In view of the probable differences in the vulnerability of different tissues in different individuals, it may well be that the vitamin C needs for best health could vary from individual to individual more than the amount of vitamin C necessary for tissue saturation. It may easily be the case, for example, that some individuals are healthy and free from minor symptoms when their tissues are 50 per cent saturated Others, because of the greater vulnerability of specific tissues may require that their tissues be highly saturated at all times. Dalldorf 49 hints at something like resistant vitamin C deficiency when he says, "Even these large amounts [75 to 100 mg. daily], however, are inadequate to maintain saturation in certain patients" (italics added). He cites that in Hodgkins disease, protracted fever from various causes, active rheumatic heart disease, and tuberculosis, the vitamin C requirement may be "extremely high."... 

Active tuberculosis Rifabutin prophylaxis must not be administered to patients with active tuberculosis. HIV-positive patients are likely to have a nonreactive purified protein derivative (PPD) despite active disease. Chest X-ray, sputum culture, blood culture, urine culture, or biopsy of a suspicious lymph node may be useful in the diagnosis of tuberculosis in the HIV-positive patient. 

Early onset of drug abuse is associated with early sexual activity, crime, and educational failure. Young amphetamine users risk exploitation by adults and are more likely to become involved in criminal or violent behavior and prostitution—having to resort to sex for survival. Consequently, they are also more likely to become infected with HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases and by tuberculosis or other bacterial, fungal, or viral infections. Chronic amphetamine abusers are also more at risk for mental and emotional disorders including anxiety, phobias, and depression. They are at higher risk of suicide. 

Rust and corrosion mean an enormous loss to Americans, greater than that caused by fire and flood combined, a loss of at least one billion dollars a year. Rust is a skin disease. Corrosion is an infectious internal disease like tuberculosis. 

---