To Be or Not TB — UC Berkeley Tuberculosis Scare

My beloved alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley (Go Bears!), has made recent headlines with warnings of a potential outbreak after a student was diagnosed with active tuberculosis.

Following positive diagnosis of the student, an e-mail message was sent by Berkeley public health officials to over 200 students and instructors who may have come into contact with the patient in classrooms. According to reports, the e-mail message was perceived as overly vague and conducive to ensuing panic among students and faculty.

So why the panic? Tuberculosis (or "TB") used to be a leading cause of death and disease in the U.S. and remains a leading killer in developing countries. It has been referred to by horrible names, such as "wasting disease" or "consumption", because of the devastating physical effects it has on the body. And folklore has associated it with vampirism because of the decrepit appearance taken on by people afflicted with the disease.

But perhaps the panic ensued mostly because of the route of message delivery. What would you do if you got an e-mail message that said you might have TB, and you should go get tested? And what would you do if your roommate got the e-mail, but you didn't? What if it was your significant other? Or your lab partner who has been fighting that nagging cough?

People want more details, and when details are omitted, perhaps the natural response is to panic.

The good news is that TB is not terribly contagious. Prolonged exposure to the TB bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) is necessary for infection. Only 10% of people exposed to the disease will develop active TB (which is the symptomatic and contagious form, as opposed to latent TB). Treatment for most TB cases is effective, but may require anywhere from 6 to 9 months of antibiotics to clear the infection. Diagnosis is also fairly straightforward, consisting of a injection of mycobacterial extracts (called tuberculin or PPD) underneath the skin followed by detection of swelling (an immune reaction) after two to three days.

The irony is that this is not the first incidence of TB in Berkeley. Between 1993 and 2006, at least 142 Berkeley residents have been diagnosed with TB, according to a report conducted in 2008. Back in 1999, while I was a graduate student at Cal-Berkeley, a researcher from the lab next door reported that a vial of live TB bacteria was stolen from her hotel room in San Francisco. The story made the news for several days, but I don't recall receiving any e-mails about it.