Tuberculosis Prevention

In general, TB is a preventable disease. From a public health standpoint, the best way to control TB is to diagnose and treat people with TB infection before they develop active disease and to take careful precautions with people hospitalized with TB. But there are also measures you can take on your own to help protect yourself and others:

• Keep your immune system healthy. Make sure you eat plenty of healthy foods, get adequate amounts of sleep and exercise regularly to keep your immune system in top form.
• Get tested regularly. Experts advise getting a skin test annually if you have HIV or another disease that weakens your immune system, live or work in a prison or nursing home, are a health care worker, or have a substantially increased risk of exposure to the disease.
• Consider preventive therapy. If you test positive for latent TB infection, but have no evidence of active TB, talk to your doctor about therapy with isoniazid to reduce your risk of developing active TB in the future. A vaccine, BCG, is available and has been of some benefit in preventing TB. It's not widely used in the United States and is more often administered in countries where TB is more common. The vaccine isn't very effective in adults, although it can prevent TB from spreading outside the lungs in infants. Vaccination with BCG also causes a false-positive result on a Mantoux skin test and for that reason, isn't recommended for general use in the United States. Researchers are working on developing a more effective TB vaccine.
• Finish your entire course of medication. This is the most important step you can take to protect yourself and others from TB. When you stop treatment early or skip doses, TB bacteria have a chance to develop mutations that are resistant to the most potent TB drugs. The resulting drug-resistant strains are much more deadly and difficult to treat.

To help keep your family and friends from getting sick if you have active TB:

• Stay home. Don't go to work or school or sleep in a room with other people during the first few weeks of treatment for active TB.
• Ensure adequate ventilation. Open the windows whenever possible to let in fresh air.
• Cover your mouth. It takes two to three weeks of treatment before you're no longer contagious. During that time, be sure to cover your mouth with a tissue any time you laugh, sneeze or cough. Put the dirty tissue in a bag, seal it and throw it away. Also, wearing a mask when you're around other people during the first three weeks of treatment may help lessen the risk of transmission.