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What Are the Treatments?

Anyone with tuberculosis must be monitored by a doctor. If you have the infection — but not the active disease — your doctor will probably prescribe one antibiotic called isoniazid (INH) to help prevent the dormant infection from becoming active. If you have the active disease, your doctor will give you several antibiotics in order to prevent resistant bacteria from emerging in your body.

If you are infected with TB but do not have the active disease, your doctor will likely give you a daily dose of isoniazid and will see you regularly to ensure you are tolerating the drug without any side effects. Since people over 60 have more side effects from INH, you and your doctor might decide that the risks of INH may outweigh the risk of getting active TB.

If you have the active disease, regularly monitored treatment by a doctor is crucial. You will be given a combination of several antibiotics, which may include INH, rifampin, pyrazinamide, or ethambutol.

Two decades ago, the U.S. surgeon general announced that tuberculosis was a disease of the past. He spoke too soon: The disease has since resurfaced in a potent new form that has once again turned TB into a public-health hazard.

This new form, called multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), is caused by strains of the bacterium M. tuberculosis that, through mutation, have developed the ability to resist two or more antibiotic drugs. Even with treatment, roughly half of all MDR-TB patients with active infection die. This death rate matches that of people with regular TB who received no medical care at all. Fortunately, this form of TB is still relatively rare. Most cases of TB are still highly treatable if the antibiotics are taken as directed.