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Health

New test finds TB case to be less severe

The CDC defends its handling of the international public heath scare and says protocol is unchanged.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 4, 2007

DENVER - The Atlanta tuberculosis patient whose trans-Atlantic voyage in May sparked an international public health incident has a less severe form of the disease than was initially diagnosed, health officials said Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in late May that Andrew Speaker had the most dangerous form of the illness, known as extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, and had left the United States against the advice of medical authorities.

The CDC asked the Department of Homeland Security to bar him from flying back into the United States, and for the first time in 44 years used its quarantine power to order him into isolation should he return.

Speaker flew to Canada and persuaded a border inspector to let him cross back into the United States despite being on a watch list. He surrendered to medical authorities in New York.

But on Tuesday, the CDC and the hospital where Speaker is being treated in Denver, National Jewish Medical and Research Center, announced that Speaker actually has multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Unlike the more severe type, this type of TB can be treated with some drugs, and its survival rate is twice as high as that of the extensively drug-resistant strain, though still far lower than normal TB.

Speaker's doctors have postponed lung surgery scheduled for this month. They said at an afternoon news conference they were optimistic for both him and any patients he may have exposed to the disease in his flights.

"These new tests results are good news for Mr. Speaker, " said Dr. Charles Daley. "If someone has been infected by Mr. Speaker, we now have some drugs available to try to prevent them from developing TB."

The CDC said it will not know until at least the end of the month whether anyone was infected by Speaker, and defended its handling of the case. It said the public health protocols on handling extensively and multiple drug-resistant cases are identical.

Medical officials say they are not certain why the initial test showed the more virulent form, but warned that tuberculosis testing is an imperfect process. "This discordance among results happens all the time in laboratories, " Daley said.

Fast Facts:

Testing time line

March: Tests on Andrew Speaker at an Atlanta hospital show he has multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR TB.

May 22: CDC tests show that Speaker has the most drug-resistant form of TB, XDR.

Early June: National Jewish tests Speaker after he arrives in Denver, using three different, fresher samples and another testing technique. Those tests find him to have the milder multidrug-resistant TB. The CDC replicates those results with remnants of its original sample and agrees with the new diagnosis.

[Last modified July 4, 2007, 01:27:10]