Asian reported the most for the deadly disease.
AB Wire
The deadly airborne disease tuberculosis, after being on the decline in the U.S. for the past 23 years, showed an uptick in the number of cases, according to federal data released Thursday.
The number of TB cases rose last year and the rate of cases has leveled off at three per 100,000 people since 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report, reported The Wall Street Journal.
While the increase in cases was slight—9,563 cases in 2015, compared with 9,406 in 2014—it suggests that progress toward a long-standing national goal of reducing tuberculosis to one case or fewer per million people is off course, TB officials and experts conceded.
“Right now it looks like progress has stalled in moving toward elimination,” said Philip LoBue, director of the CDC’s division of tuberculosis elimination.
It also comes at a time when fighting tuberculosis globally has become more complicated and costly, with heavily drug-resistant forms of the disease spreading. That problem has come to roost in the U.S., as patients who traveled or lived abroad have been diagnosed with difficult-to-treat cases here.
Though most cases of TB are curable, the disease now kills more people world-wide than HIV/AIDS, according to the World Health Organization, which reported 1.5 million TB deaths in 2014.
Resuming the decline in TB in the U.S. will require greater efforts both at home and globally, Dr. LoBue said, reported the Journal. That includes finding and treating up to 13 million people in the U.S. with “latent” TB, meaning people who are infected with the bacteria but aren’t actively ill, he said. About 85% of people in the U.S. who developed the disease already had latent TB infection, which they often pick up in other countries, he said.
The Washington Post reported 29 states and the District of Columbia each had more cases in 2015 than 2014.
The overall increase was relatively small: 157 more cases, bringing the 2015 total to 9,563. Two-thirds of the total were among people born abroad, with Asians accounting for the most cases (3,007) and the highest rate (28.2 cases per 100,000 persons). By comparison, there were only .5 cases per 100,000 whites last year.
“After two decades of declining incidence, progress toward TB elimination in the United States appears to have stalled,” the CDC report said. The causes are unclear, it said, and the data need further evaluation if the reasons behind the trend are to be identified.
The disease can be difficult to manage and treat, even more so if substance abuse, incarceration or homelessness are involved. Advocates say that people with TB often have other diseases, such as diabetes, that also complicate treatment.
More than half of cases reported in 2015 were clustered in four states — California, Florida, New York and Texas — which have one-third of the U.S. population. Texas saw 1,334 cases in 2015, which was 5 percent more than the previous year.
South Carolina experienced a 32 percent increase year over year, hitting 104 cases in 2015, reported the Post.
Health officials said progress toward eliminating TB in the United States will require a redoubling of domestic and global efforts — especially in China, India, Mexico the Philippines and Vietnam, the countries responsible for more than half of the foreign-born tuberculosis patients in the United States, the report shows.
In a related report, the CDC also called for increased awareness of the potential for active TB among foreign-born temporary workers. TB screening is required for persons seeking permanent residence in the United States, but it is not routinely required for people coming on temporary visas for school or work. Those numbers are not included in official case counts.