'Latent' tuberculosis? It is really not that common, experts find

Drug-resistant TB remains a crisis, the WHO reported, and just three countries - India, China and Russia - account for almost half the cases

Although experts frequently assert that nearly 1.7 billion people carry dormant tuberculosis worldwide, that figure may be a “gross exaggeration” of the real threat, a recent study concludes.

The study, published last month in the journal BMJ, found that nearly everyone who falls seriously ill with TB does so within two years of getting infected. So-called latent infections only rarely become active, even in old age.

Researchers “have spent hundreds of millions of dollars chasing after latency, but the whole idea that a quarter of the world is infected with TB is based on a fundamental misunderstanding,” said Dr. Lalita Ramakrishnan, a