A dozen tuberculosis patients at a Mumbai hospital have failed to respond to any treatment, sparking fears that a totally drug-resistant TB strain could be spreading. The lung disease, which kills roughly 1.5 million people worldwide every year, was once easily treatable with antibiotics. But in recent years, varieties resistant to one or more drugs have proliferated around the world.
Researchers say patients often fail to complete the six- to nine-month course of antibiotics required to destroy TB bacteria, allowing some microbes to survive and mutate into harder-to-kill forms. That’s the suspected cause of the new Indian strain, which will “spread for sure” among the country’s dense population, Zarir Udwadia, one of the doctors who discovered the bacteria’s resistance, tells the Associated Press.
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