It always seems to me that taking tablets without having suffered any actual illness is one of the most difficult things to do, especially when there is the added complication of strictly keeping to a regime.
I guess I'm just one of the unlucky ones that suffers side-effects from TB therapy. Throughout the first month of my treatment I have had a variety of relatively minor illnesses including diarrhoea, nausea, stomach cramps and headaches. This wouldn't feel so bad if I knew that I was ill and needed to take the treatment to cure my illness, but when you're just popping the pills without seeing any benefit it can feel quite pointless.
It is well recognised that compliance with TB medication can be quite poor especially after the initial 'active' illness has been 'treated' and this, in combination with inappropriate prescribing may lead to up to 50% of patients not being cured (Taylor et al. 1996).
This has the added risk of the tubercle bacilli becoming resistant to some or all of the drugs used causing multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), which is, not surprisingly, much more difficult to treat.
Personally, I can fully understand those patients that choose not to comply with their therapy, but also have the experience and knowledge to know that this is a very rash and potentially lethal mistake to make. Despite the side-effects that I am suffering I have made the conscious decision to follow the pharmacy instructions to the letter as the prospect of developing MDR-TB and having to spend time as an inpatient, isolated in hospital is altogether more unpleasant than six months of intensive oral treatment.
Reproduced with kind permission of the UK Coalition of PLW HIV/AIDS
