Each year, we recognize World TB Day to commemorate March 24, 1882 when Dr. Koch discovered Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causal agent of tuberculosis (TB). At the time of its discovery, TB killed one of every seven people in the US and Europe.
In the 1700s, TB was called “the white plague” due to the paleness of the patients. In the early 1800s there were “vampire panics” throughout New England as the disease was thought to be hereditary. It was thought that the first of the family to pass away from the disease return as a vampire to infect the rest of the family. It was not until 1834 that Johann Schonlein coined the term ‘tuberculosis.’
The discovery of the bacterium in 1882 presented at the Berlin Physiological Society conference, titled “Die Aetiologie der Tuberculose” proved that TB was an infectious disease, and Koch won the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1905 for his discovery.
In 1943, Selman Waksman, Elizabeth Bugie, and Albert Schatz developed Streptomycin, a breakthrough for TB treatment.
Today, our names for TB tell us where it is located (pulmonary, extrapulmonary) and how to treat it (drug-susceptible, drug-resistant, multidrug resistant, and extensively drug-resistant.)
If you are working on TB, we offer many antimicrobials used for TB research: Isoniazid, Pyrazinamide, Ethambutol, and Rifampicin, including Rifampicin ReadyMade™ solution. Additional compounds include Pretomanid, Delamanid and others.
The CDC along with its partners and researchers around the world help to prevent and control TB.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): World TB Day