Word: tb
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...lungs were probably cancer. Ida Mae Williams, 76, of Bogalusa, La., was informed that she had tuberculosis. Three women, three different diagnoses--all of them wrong. After years of ineffectual treatment, each woman learned that she, like thousands of other Americans, had developed a mysterious lung infection that mimics TB, seems to strike thin, white women in particular and can be permanently debilitating. Most unsettling of all, they could have developed the ailment simply by stepping into a shower...
Physicians don't know much about this mysterious illness. Like TB, it is triggered by a group of germs called mycobacteria. Unlike TB, it is not contagious, though it seems to thrive in hot, humid states in the U.S. Indeed, a recent survey conducted by health authorities in Florida found that hospitals in the region discharged far more patients with non-TB mycobacterial (or, as doctors call it, NTM) infections than with TB. And once you have NTM, it's tough to get rid of. "It takes three times as long to treat as conventional TB and relapses are common...
...gross anatomy to molecular biology. Equally important, researchers are beginning to understand how the body's systems--immune, nervous, endocrine--affect one another. Scientists have uncovered secrets about how exercise and nutrition can stave off everything from heart disease to aging. They're working on vaccines for AIDS, malaria, TB and even cancer. They're learning--most recently in the post-Sept. 11 anthrax attacks--how the judicious use of antibiotics can prevent disaster (and how abusing those medicines can cause it). In the wake of America's crash course on bioterrorism, they're pushing to revitalize the nation...
...similar strategy could lead to vaccines against malaria and TB. But while conquering such hitherto vaccine-resistant diseases would be dramatic, it would be positively revolutionary to extend vaccines to illnesses that have seemed beyond their reach. One such candidate is heart disease--which may involve the immune system in ways nobody ever imagined just a few years ago. The buildup of fatty cholesterol deposits on artery walls may begin, it turns out, with an inflammation perhaps caused by bacteria. This immune response alters the arteries in ways that make them prone to cholesterol damage. A vaccine that could prevent...
...remain strip the ship hulks for scrap and fish for chemically laced carp in a small, shrinking lake to the east. The population has abnormally high rates of acute respiratory infections and cancer, kidney disease, iodine deficiency, diarrhea, birth defects and defoliant poisoning. Close to 90% are anemic. TB has killed 27 people since January 2000 and infected hundreds more. "Life here used to be so good," says Borliqboy Olloyorov, whose creased face makes him look older than his 50 years and whose TB seems certain to kill him as it did his brother. "We had the sea, the breeze...