I tested positive for tuberculosis when I was 12. I took medicine for one month which doctor prescribed?

Question

I tested positive for tuberculosis when I was 12. I took medicine for one month which doctor prescribed and was cured. I am 32. Can I still get the tuberculosis if I go next to an infected person? Should I get tested again?

Answer 1

if you only took meds for a month, you aren't and weren't cured. The treatment for tuberculosis takes six months. I urge you to get a chest xray, not the skin test, and make sure you do not have active disease. Once you have had TB, your skin tests will always be positive because your body carries the antibody....you need to get a chest xray.

Answer 2

The first infection was Primary Infection. The second one is called Secondary Infection. If the infection never actually gets cured, but just lies quiet in the body, only to wake up in low defence times, it is called Post-Primary Infection.

I understand that when you say you were "cured", the doctor had made sure the disease had gone completely. But you can get Secondary Tuberculosis.

When a person gets infected once, the defence system sort of recognizes the germ, so that the next time it comes, the body is ready to kill before any illness occurs. If you are a healthy person, with a healthy defence system, your body will protect you. But during illnesses, or when physically weak, try to avoid the "infected person".

If you are not having any problems, and you are as healthy as before, there is no need to get tested again.

Answer 3

Hi Joe.
Its very unlikely that one month of TB treatment is going to cure an active disease. So the most likely scenario is that you never had TB to begin with. The skin test is a very confusing test and should never be used as a deffinitive TB test. At age 12 its most probable that the test detected the antibodies from the immune reaction from the previous immunization.

Its also possible that this was just the primary infection which for most cases the body is able to get rid of by developing antibodies.

Unfortunately, after the primary infection some TB bacilli lie dormant in the lung tissues sometimed for the rest of ones life with out being reactivated to active disease, but sometimes they are activated by different situations like stress, immune suppression, or other active lower respiratory infections and become fulminant TB disease.

So the answer to your second question, is YES its possible for you to get TB.

Getting tested again will not detect TB unless you have an active disease. The skin test though will always be positive.
The best test is to test the presence of AFBs in your sputum if you have any productive cough. An X-ray is also helpfull but I would not use it to diagnose TB by itself because there could be previous infiltrates unrelated to TB disease.