Two words you don't wanna see in the same sentence...
deadly and synergy...The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that details the link between TB and HIV in the United States. Worldwide, TB is the leading cause of death among people infected with HIV.
Nine percent of all people with active TB in the United States tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus infection in 2005. But HIV infection status remained unknown in 31 percent of TB patients because they refused testing or were not offered a test, the CDC report said.
"HIV increases TB progression and TB increases HIV progression. And they result in a synergy that can be deadly," CDC epidemiologist Suzanne Marks, one of the authors of the report, said in a telephone interview.
