{"id":12504,"date":"2017-08-04T17:21:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T17:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/08\/04\/south-texas-fights-tuberculosis-one-blood-test-at-a-time\/"},"modified":"2017-08-04T17:21:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T17:21:00","slug":"south-texas-fights-tuberculosis-one-blood-test-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/south-texas-fights-tuberculosis-one-blood-test-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"South Texas Fights Tuberculosis One Blood Test At A Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Wendy Rigby<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n James Harrison gets a free blood test from Michelle Mutchler with the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. The test checks for a dormant tuberculosis infection that hasn’t produced symptoms, but could flare into an active state and become contagious.<\/p>\n

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Wendy Rigby\/Texas Public Radio<\/p>\n

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Wendy Rigby\/Texas Public Radio<\/p>\n

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At San Antonio’s largest homeless shelter, huge fans cool off the temporary residents. The courtyard can get crowded. One of the hundreds of nightly boarders is James Harrison. “I lost my apartment and had nowhere else to go,” he explains.<\/p>\n

Like most people at Haven for Hope<\/a>, Harrison, who is 55, doesn’t plan on staying long. But while he’s here, he’s taking advantage of some free medical testing \u2014 a screening for dormant tuberculosis.<\/p>\n

“People don’t even think about TB anymore because you don’t see it anymore,” Harrison says. “There’s nothing that tells you until it’s too late that it’s there.”<\/p>\n

Differences between latent and active TB<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tuberculosis is an airborne bacterial infection that attacks the lungs and can be deadly. There’s a common TB skin test, but the San Antonio health department says the skin test takes 48 to 72 hours to produce a result and is susceptible to false positives. A blood test is more accurate and requires only 24 hours to get results. A vial of blood can be tested to see if people are carrying TB without showing symptoms. That’s called latent tuberculosis infection<\/a>, a condition that puts them at much greater risk of developing active, contagious TB if they are exposed again.<\/p>\n