"EXPERTS" did not believe us when we spoke of a huge TB epidemic two years ago.
With the evidence we have gathered from our laboratory work, our claims of a TB
epidemic are now undisputed.
We have also discovered a scientific fact
that was forgotten during the 1950s, 60s and 70s when the progress of child
health virtually eradicated TB as a scourge of the Western and industrialized
world.
During the last four months we realized that the thrombocytes
(blood plaques) in children with TB were significantly elevated.
Upon
checking all the modern literature on TB we found only one study mentioned
thrombocytes without giving it any special attention. A retrospective study in
South Africa on TB-meningitis said that 60 percent of all cases showed elevated
thrombocyte levels.
In all the great, modern textbooks on pediatrics or
infectious diseases nothing is written about thrombocytes in TB.
But in
one old European textbook that is no longer used we found our observations
confirmed: thrombocytosis is a sign of chronic infection, especially in
TB.
We find that 40 percent of all TB cases show this trend, because in
many cases where secondary diseases are present (typhus, malaria, dengue etc),
the thromobocyte level actually diminishes. When the secondary infection is
cleared, the thromobocytosis only then becomes visible.
In September, we
will begin studying every out-patient to see if this could be used as a simple,
inexpensive but exact screening for TB.
Hopefully, this could be used to
treat TB at a stage much earlier than the advanced, desperate level that we now
see at Kantha Bopha.
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