Woman with rare form of TB treated at NIH in Bethesda - Washington Post

By Dana Hedgpeth, <span class="timestamp updated pre" epochtime="1433850600000" datetitle="published" pagetype="leaf" contenttype="article"/>


A woman with a rare form of tuberculosis is being treated at the National Institutes of Health as health officials seek others whom she may have come in contact with while traveling on a flight from India and on trips inside the United States.

The woman’s name has not been released.

Officials at NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the woman has been diagnosed with an “extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis,” known as XDR-TB, that is a “relatively rare type of TB.” That form is resistant to many medications typically used to treat TB, health experts said.

In April, the woman traveled from India via Chicago O’Hare International Airport. She also spent time in Missouri and Tennessee.

Seven weeks after she got to the United States, she sought treatment and was diagnosed with active TB, officials said. She is currently in stable condition in an isolation unit at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda.

The woman was transferred to NIH in special air and ground ambulances on Friday, health officials said. She was also treated in respiratory isolation at a suburban Chicago hospital before she came to NIH.

Health officials said they are working to get the passenger manifest for her flight and also trying to identify people who may have had contact with her elsewhere to check for possible signs of TB.

In a statement, CDC officials said “although the risk of getting a contagious disease on an airplane is low,” health officials warned that they “sometimes need to find and alert travelers who may have been exposed to an ill passenger.”

TB germs are spread through the air when the infected person coughs, sneezes, speaks or sings. Tests of skin and blood can be done to determine exposure to TB.

In a statement, NIH said it “is taking every precaution to ensure the safety of all concerned, and the situation is of minimal risk to other Clinical Center patients, NIH staff, and the public.”

Staff writer Lena Sun contributed to this report.

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