Living With Tuberculosis - Glossary of Terms

BCG – a vaccine for TB named after the French scientists who developed it, Calmette and Guérin.  BCG is not commonly used in the United States because vaccinating large, healthy, adult populations creates an unnecessary burden on the healthcare system.  This is due to the fact that every person who receives the BCG vaccination will have a positive skin test for the rest of their lives, thus requiring much more extensive and expensive testing to determine if the positive skin test was due to an actual infection, or to the bodies’ response to the BCG vaccine.

Even though BCG is not widely used in the United States, it is often given to infants and small children in other countries where TB is common.  Though not entirely effective, the BCG vaccine does offer protection from the most virulent (serious) forms of the disease in these populations.

Extrapulmonary TB – active TB disease in any part of the body other than the lungs (for example, the kidney, spine, brain, or lymph nodes).

Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB)  – active TB disease caused by bacteria resistant to two or more of the most important medicines: INH and RIF.  MDR TB can be a major public health menace.

Supervised Intermittent Chemotherapy - Denver’s own Dr. John Sbarbaro was probably the first person in the United States to fully comprehend the challenge of getting patients to complete their courses of antibiotics.  Dr. Sbarbaro understood that many people simply stop taking their medications when they feel better – even though all of the disease causing bacteria have not been killed at this point.  Unfortunately, this practice can lead to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) – a major public health concern.  To protect communities against MDR TB, Dr. Sbarbaro developed programs of supervised intermittent chemotherapy where a doctor or other healthcare professional meets regularly with the patient to supervise the taking of medication.

(Iseman, Michael D., MD.  A Clinician’s Guide to Tuberculosis.  p. xiv.  Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000.)

Tuberculin is made from a non-infectious antigen (or protein) of the bacteria that causes tuberculosis.  The bodies’ immune system will only react to tuberculin if the person is, or has been, infected by tuberculosis germs.