To eradicate tuberculosis effectively in the US the present guidelines should be modified affirms a recent work published in the American Journal of Respiratory and// Critical Care Medicine. This will need all foreign immigrants to be classified as "high-risk,” when they have originally come from high risk areas around the world.This paper has been published by American Thoracic Society.

Data on all 2004 TB cases listed in the U.S. National TB Surveillance database were collected by seven researchers along with Kevin P. Cain, M.D., of the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta., The investigators' aimed to understand why the number of annual cases of TB reported in U.S.-born persons declined by 93 percent from 1993 to 2004, while foreign-born cases increased by five-percent.

"For example, in 2004, a total of 14,517 cases of TB were reported," said Dr. Cain. "Of these, 3,444 or 24 percent were foreign-born persons who had entered the United States more than five years previously." Present guidelines recommend only those residing in the U.S. for five years or less be targeted for tuberculin skin testing and treatment of latent TB infection. The following countries of origin of U.S. immigrant residents had the largest number of TB cases in 2004: Mexico (1,976), Philippines (829), Vietnam (619), India (557), China (352), Haiti (248), South Korea (219), Guatemala (190), Ethiopia (169) and Peru (159).

"Twenty-five percent of all reported TB cases in the United States are among foreign-born persons who have lived in the U.S. for more than five years," said Dr. Cain. "There is no policy to test foreign-born persons for latent TB infection before entering the U.S., or to test them after they have lived here for more than five years. As such, present guidelines do not currently address the burden of latent TB infection in the foreign-born subgroup."

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