Smoking doubles the risk of requiring treatment for active tuberculosis, cancer. Doctors have warned after citing the results of a three-year study in Taiwan, with over 17,000 participants. The causative agent of tuberculosis are certain bacteria that can be made from diseased patients with a so-called open tuberculosis, coughing, speaking, singing or sneezing.

In the finest form of infectious droplet nuclei into the area and then inhaled by other people. Normally our body’s immune system succeeds in these pathogens after an initial contact successfully curbs. So sick with an intact immune system, only about 10% of those infected in developed countries at one requiring treatment, active tuberculosis. In contrast, patients with lowered immunity are at particular risk of suffering from tuberculosis. This group includes patients with cancer, kidney failure, diabetes and HIV / AIDS sufferers, but also active smokers, like the study from Taiwan has re-established. Inhaled smoke sets the cleaning function of the cilia in the respiratory mucosa expires and reduces the resistance to infections.

Yet if the immune system fails to isolate the tuberculosis disease in so-called granulomas and prevent its propagation, it can either come directly after the infection to a disease or lead years later to a so-called reactivation. That is, when a weakening of the immune response to the tuberculosis pathogen that have been dormant within the granulomas to himself, sooner or later be reactivated so that it then comes to the development of therapeutic measures, active tuberculosis. The risk of disease is in the first two years after an infection is highest. Furthermore, the risk for a disease of tuberculosis is directly dependent on how many cigarettes are smoked a day and for how many years. In other words, the risk is greater the more years a smoker pack on his back. To that extent, we can recommend pulmonary doctors just for that reason only, to give up smoking. Bans on smoking in public places, in principle, should also help to contain and control the tuberculosis infection propagated more, which would certainly be within the meaning of the entire population.