Awareness about pulmonary tuberculosis in post graduate students of Institute of molecular biology & biotechnology Pakistan

Abstract

Pulmonary Tuberculosis is the most prevalent infectious disease of human beings, which causes illness and large number of deaths worldwide. This contagious disease is mainly caused by the bacterium known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis). M. tuberculosis primarily affects the lungs, but it can also influence the central nervous system, lymphatic and circulatory system.1 The diagnosis process of active contagious TB mainly involves radiology techniques such as chest X-rays but also includes microscopic examination and microbiological culture of body fluids like multiple sputum cultures. Basically PTB is of two types one type of PTB is latent TB where the bacteria present in the body remain inactive and produce no symptoms and other one is active PTB during which infection occur. The diagnosis of latent PTB depends on the Mantoux tuberculin skin test and Interferon gamma release assays of the blood samples.2 Prevention of TB mainly includes screening programs and vaccination such as Bacillus Calmette Guerin vaccine.3 In spite of the availability of treatment that cure in about 90 percent of cases, TB is main health problem. M. tuberculosis affects one third population of the world with new infections occurring in about 1 per cent of the population each year. It is the second leading cause of death from an infectious disease worldwide after the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). There were an estimated 13.7 million chronic active cases globally in 2007, hile 8.8 million new cases and 1.5 million associated deaths were reported in 2010, mostly occurring in developing countries.4 In 2011, TB was the foremost death causing infectious disease worldwide after HIV and liable for 1.7 million deaths.5 Although 80 percent of the population of Asian and African countries showed positive tuberculin tests, only 5-10 percent people of United States are diagnosed positive with this test. This shows heterogeneous distribution of tuberculosis across the globe.6 The data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in November 2010 shows continuous fall in number of new cases of TB globally in five out of six WHO regions. According to latest reports of WHO, 8.6 million people were suffering from TB in 2012 and 3 million of them were not diagnosed and thus not treated. In 2013, about 9 million people were infected with TB and about 1.5 million deaths occurred. In 2016 there are about 1.7 million people died of pulmonary tuberculosis and it is considered as the ninth major cause of death in the world. The basic purpose of this study was to access the awareness of post graduate students about pulmonary tuberculosis. Material and methods