Talk:Tuberculosis

Former featured articleTuberculosis is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Good articleTuberculosis has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on August 25, 2004.
On this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
January 19, 2004Refreshing brilliant proseKept
October 15, 2006Featured article reviewKept
September 26, 2011Featured article reviewDemoted
May 12, 2012Good article nomineeListed
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on March 24, 2005, March 24, 2006, March 24, 2007, March 24, 2008, March 24, 2009, March 24, 2010, March 24, 2011, March 24, 2013, March 24, 2015, March 24, 2017, March 24, 2019, and March 24, 2021.
Current status: Former featured article, current good article

Pronunciation

There is currently no pronunciation for the name "tuberculosis" in this article. There is reason to believe there are variations in British English. I have heard it pronounced tjuːˈbɜːrkjuːˌloʊsɪs (tew-BER-kew-loh-sis) in Received Pronunciation (the standard British accent) by the narrator of the 1984 BBC schools series Badger Girl when describing badgers being blamed for bovine TB. However, I have have also heard it pronounced in real life with the primary stress on either the first or penultimate syllable e.g. ˌtjuːbərkjuːˈloʊsɪs (tew-bər-kew-LOH-sis) but the first and third syllables are pronounced with yods anyway. This could explain why the name of the disease is often shortened to "TB" although I think it is more like because the abbreviation is shorter. Tk420 (talk) 21:42, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vaccine information and linked article stub/BCG article redundancy?

I noticed the section on TB vaccines is extremely tiny. There’s also a separate Tuberculosis vaccines article, however this is also extremely tiny. Perhaps that article’s content should be merged back into the full Tuberculosis article? Unless it’s expanded significantly, I’m not sure it needs to be a separate article, and merging it would make things easier for those trying to learn about the topic.

(I don’t normally edit in this topic space so my apologies if it’s just standard practice to separate out vaccine articles)

There’s also a separate article on the BCG vaccine specifically though, and that one is much more detailed than the general vaccine article, so I’m not sure what the best policy is regarding that. If it’s decided that should be kept separate then perhaps that should be merged with the general TB vaccines article (since it seems it might mention other TB vaccines anyway) and a small summary of the most relevant data included on this (the main TB) page?

—

Also, I wanted to suggest a little more detail be added (either to the vaccines section in this article or the separate Tuberculosis vaccines article, if that is kept separate). I was curious and wanted to look up what countries use TB vaccines, and when the first TB vaccines were invented, and found neither piece of info in either this article or the separate vaccines article—although there is a country list and more historical info in the BCG article. If that info applies to the general topic of TB vaccines perhaps it could be added here?

—

tl;dr it just seems weird that there’s a TB article, a TB vaccines stub that doesn’t really add much more detail than what’s already in the TB article, and a separate article on BCG vaccines which seems to also contain the general info one would expect to find in the general TB vaccines article? I’m not sure all three are truly necessary.

But again, this is not my area of expertise so I wanted to just propose it as a suggestion (to the folks who do focus on this article) which might make the content more accessible for readers. Catfrost (talk) 01:04, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Catfrost I agree that the vaccine article is pretty useless, and probably redundant. There is a problem with many medical articles, they need constant updating as research develops or demographics change, but very few editors have time or inclination. The best thing to do is too give the article header a tag such as update, stub or medcn etc if you can't update / expand it yourself. Bob (talk) 15:34, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated sentences

The following sentences is repeated twice in the article. This is redundant. Also, two different citations are used despite the numbers being the same.

"As of 2023, eight countries accounted for more than two thirds of global TB cases: India (26%), Indonesia (10%), China (6.8%), the Philippines (6.8%), Pakistan (6.3%), Nigeria (4.6%), Bangladesh (3.5%) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (3.1%)[81]" ~2025-34212-65 (talk) 19:27, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@~2025-34212-65 Thank you, removed one instance. Bob (talk) 20:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Updated treatment guidelines

I noticed that the "New onset" subsection of the "Management" section of the article is missing some fairly significant updates to the treatment guidelines for drug-susceptible pulmonary TB, which include the recommendation of a 4-month regimen in eligible cases (no known or suspected resistance to rifampin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, or fluoroquinolones). This is far from my area of expertise, so I am uncertain of if this section should be rewritten entirely, or recent guideline changes should simply be appended. Ajswz (talk) 03:50, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ajswz thanks for pointing this 2022 recommendation out. It only seems to apply in the US, and it has not worked well in practice https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12233099. But you've highlighted an issue with this paragraph, that it perhaps needs to be broadened to include Moxifloxacin as a possible first-line treatment. Or alternatively remove the list of drugs and just say "multiple".
Guidelines such as WP:MEDMOS and WP:NOTATEXTBOOK apply here. I'll take a look at it over the next few days. Bob (talk) 07:55, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Improving top-importance medicine articles: Join the Vital Signs campaign 2026

The goal of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Vital Signs 2026 campaign is to bring all 101 top-importance articles—including this one—up to at least B-class quality. Many of these articles are widely read but overdue for review, so even small improvements can have a big impact.

If you watch or edit this article, your help would be very welcome. You can:

  1. Add yourself as a participant
  2. Note the state of the article in the Progress table (is the current class still correct?)
  3. Update the article based on recent clinical guidelines and review papers
  4. Help address gaps, improve clarity for a broad audience, or improve image selection

To reach B class, articles should have: suitable referencing, reasonable coverage, a clear structure, good prose, helpful illustrations, and be understandable to a broad audience. Contributions of any size are appreciated. Femke (talk) 16:00, 20 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Delete photo

Hello, i believe we should delete the photo of the boys getting tested for tuberclosis in 1934 as i believe it is innapropriate Averyshelley12 (talk) 16:12, 4 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Merge proposal

I think that Airborne Infection Control in Tuberculosis should be merged into the Prevention section of this article after being cleaned up. The subjects overlap and I believe the content could be placed here without redundancy. BlaqWiedow (talk) 21:48, 7 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I support the proposal to merge Airborne Infection Control in Tuberculosis into the Prevention section after cleanup. The overlap in subject matter makes consolidation logical, and placing the content under Prevention would improve cohesion while avoiding redundancy. Staracademic21 (talk) 02:16, 8 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if it was bad timing, but I renamed Airborne Infection Control in Tuberculosis to Airborne infection control in tuberculosis — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 08:54, 12 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Don't worry about it. Thanks for renaming it. If no one objects in a couple of days I will complete the merge. BlaqWiedow (talk) 16:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
As it has been seven days and no one has objected, I will assume that there is consensus to merge. I will post once more when the merge is completed. BlaqWiedow (talk) 01:25, 15 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Just finished the merge. If anyone disagrees with the merge, please let me know. BlaqWiedow (talk) 02:01, 15 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"Tuberculosis, ocular" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Tuberculosis, ocular has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 3 § Tuberculosis, ocular until a consensus is reached. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 18:36, 3 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Subclinical / Asymptomatic Tuberculosis

Hi,

The Wikipedia page states that "Most infections show no symptoms, in which case it is known as inactive or latent tuberculosis." However, subclinical / asymptomatic tuberculosis is a form of tuberculosis where the infected are asymptomatic but bacteriological testing turns out positive (which does not work for those with LTBI). Those with subclinical TB can also transmit TB to others. In the classic conceptualisation of TB, it goes from uninfected -> latent -> active. The understanding of subclinical is that the progression is rather uninfected <-> latent <-> no symptoms <-> unrecognised symptoms <-> recognised symptoms (active). I think a distinction should be added here that not all asymptomatic infections are latent. Please correct me if wrong. This is a very important article so I do not wish to spread misinformation and am thus posting here to check my understanding of things.


Thanks kawion (￣ω￣ ) (talk) 12:35, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Kawion that's interesting, thanks for bringing it up on the Talk page.
Secondary sources are pretty categorical that latent TB is not contagious ( example https://www.cdc.gov/tb/hcp/clinical-overview/latent-tuberculosis-infection.html). Can you cite reliable sources?
Bob (talk) 19:18, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Robertpedley Hi, sorry for the confusion. From my understanding, subclinical TB is not the same as LTBI. You are correct to say latent TB is not contagious. Subclinical is a form of active/non-latent TB where the person is asymptomatic but is contagious. There is information from the WHO here: https://www.who.int/teams/global-programme-on-tuberculosis-and-lung-health/tb-reports/global-tuberculosis-report-2024/featured-topics/asymptomatic-tb . Note that it refers to the asymptomatic TB as being bateriologically confirmed, which afaik cannot happen with LTBI. I think the best paper to be familiarised with the subject is "The Epidemiological Importance of Subclinical Tuberculosis. A Critical Reappraisal" by Kendall et al., 2021 which can be found from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7874405/ . Thanks. kawion (￣ω￣ ) (talk) 23:01, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Kawion thanks again. More sources:-
This is new - and interesting - research material. It doesn't affect treatment, but it's significant for transmission and epidemiology. Exactly how significant is not yet known - the WHO article (and other material on www.who.int) emphasises a need for more research.
IMO this deserves to be included in the article - maybe in the Research section. Open question - what do other editors/watchers think?
Bob (talk) 17:57, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

tuberculosis

Hello, I am a student researching tuberculosis and noticed that the page could potentially expand the explanation of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). MDR-TB occurs when patients do not complete their full antibiotic treatment, allowing resistant bacteria to survive and spread. I believe adding a short explanation with references from WHO and PubMed could help readers better understand the importance of completing treatment. Would this be an appropriate addition to the page? Tuberculosis”; World Health Organization; https://www.who.int/health-topics/tuberculosis “Tuberculosis Research Article”; PubMed Central; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10049048/ “Tuberculosis and Host-Pathogen Interaction”; ScienceDirect; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1472979214206950 Henryjoa77 (talk) 12:55, 3 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Henryjoa77 thanks for this suggestion. We already have this paragraph:
Drug resistance to TB can come in two forms: primary and secondary. Primary drug resistance is caused by person-to-person transmission of drug-resistant TB bacteria. Secondary drug resistance (also called acquired resistance) develops during TB treatment. A person with fully drug-susceptible TB may develop secondary (acquired) resistance during therapy because of inadequate treatment, not taking the prescribed regimen appropriately (lack of compliance), or using low-quality drugs
More on this topic in the MDR-TB page.
There's a Wikipedia guideline for medical articles at WP:MEDMOS, please check it out. Bearing this in mind, would you like to suggest a sentence or two for this article?
Best wishes, Bob (talk) 19:36, 3 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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