Breathing freely over TB patient

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are likely taking a collective sigh of relief. This just in from The Scientist intern Kelly Chi: Today (July 3) representatives from the National Jewish Medical Research Center and the CDC revealed that Andrew Speaker, a patient who sparked international concern after traveling with a highly-resistant form of TB, has multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), not extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB). This means that he can be treated with a fluoroquinolone or other injectable drugs that would have not been effective against XDR-TB. The first test was conducted by the CDC using a subculture of Speaker's sputum and resulted in an XDR-TB diagnosis. The mycobacteriology laboratory at National Jewish subsequently tested sputum samples taken from Speaker on three separate occasions: April 25 in Atlanta, May 27 in New York, and June 1 in Denver. All tests have revealed MDR-TB, using multiple cultures, multiple...