After a long and steady decline, tuberculosis (TB) is threatening to return in force in the US. A flurry of new cases in Kansas City appears to be one of the largest outbreaks in the US since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began keeping records of TB in the 1950s.
As per data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), there were 110 active (transmissible) TB cases and 632 latent (non-transmissible) cases in the state in 2024.
While the risk of infection for the general public remains low, health officials are keen to find all the current active and latent cases, and make sure the necessary treatments can be supplied – before the outbreak gets worse.
“This outbreak is still ongoing, which means that there could be more cases,” KDHE communications director Jill Bronaugh told Chris Dall at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), part of the University of Minnesota.
Active, transmissible TB infections come with symptoms such as coughing, chest pains, and chills, and if left untreated can be fatal – two deaths in 2024 have been linked to the Kansas City outbreak. In this form, the disease is highly contagious.
Latent, inactive TB infections can’t be passed from person to person, and don’t come with any symptoms – but these infections can become active at any time. Both types of TB infection can be treated with antibiotics over the course of several months.
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Mostly caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria and usually affecting the lungs, the disease has been around for thousands of years. While the percentage of fatal cases has plummeted, tuberculosis remains the world’s biggest infectious killer.
In developed countries such as the US, treatments are readily available. After plateauing in the 1980s, the number of infections in the US has been dropping year on year, until 2020 and COVID-19. Since then, cases are back on the rise, up to 8,331 in 2022.
Historically known as consumption, TB has often been thought of as the disease of the poor. People in large group settings – such as homeless shelters, prisons, or nursing homes – are more at risk of getting infected.
It takes around 10 days of treatment for someone with active TB to no longer be infectious, Bronaugh told Jason Alatidd, at local news outlet The Topeka Capital-Journal.
“We are working collaboratively with CDC,” KDHE deputy secretary Ashley Goss told the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee last week.
“This is normal when there’s something unprecedented or a large outbreak of any kind, they will come and lend resources to us to help get a stop to that. We are trending in the right direction right now.”
