Has anyone ever had a Tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis? It looks like my husband has an active case...

[PurpleNightingale]

My husband has has a bad cough for a month or two and has been called into the hospital today to get back the results of some TB tests.

It sounds like it is positive from the questions and the tone of the lady on the phone (tracing contacts, asking about symptoms in the family members).

It's feeling a bit scary as we have young children (8 and 5) in the house and I guess we have all been exposed too. I never thought too much about it being anything that would be a worry to us, although I was concerned about him.

Has anyone ever been diagnosed? Treated? It feels like such an old fashioned and rare thing to have, I didn't know it was still around. We both got our BCG vaccinations at school too and the little scars to prove it 😂

We own our own home and live just our family in it, we work in offices with professional jobs. Don't travel beyond Europe with work. It feels so unlikely and strange to have this in our home... I would usually associate it with overcrowded slum living. I feel almost strangely dirty about it.

Anyone else who has been here and would like to chat would be gratefully appreciated!

It flourishes more in cramped conditions because it's carried in droplets, but that's not to say that people in better circumstances can't be unlucky and get an infection. Don't feel dirty!

A distant relative was diagnosed with TB, it appears he’d had it since he was a child and it had lain dormant. He had an inflated stomach and it had been in tissue behind his stomach, they actually thought it was cancer but turned out it was TB.

The family had a dairy farm and drank milk from the cows before it had been pasteurised.

I had it in my lymph nodes as a child, no one had a clue where I’d caught it from.

I was diagnosed with TB via a chest xray before starting work in an NHS job (mid 80s)

I was on treatment for about a year I think. but after the first month of taking the capsules I was able to start work and there were no further problems. As it's a notifiable disease I was asked about contacts but that was very basic info about people I shared a house with.

Hopefully it will be that straightforward for your dh.

I'd also had the bcg jab as a teenager.

I've not had it but I worked with people who had had it on a research project about BCG vaccines. Apparently the vaccine is only effective for about five years. So they're trying to make a new one.
I know you have to take quite heavy duty antibiotics for several months. But once you're being treated you're not contagious? I think.
Travel to certain countries, being in overcrowded housing, student accommodations, prisons were some of the at risk areas.

I had it as a child, as did my father. We’d lived in west Africa some years earlier and reckon we caught it there. It seems it can lie dormant for some time? All I remember is a long course of treatment, maybe six months + of pills? That was in the 90s so treatment might be different now?

There was a case of TB at my daughter's secondary school years ago.Once the teenager was diagnosed they screened everyone who sat near them in class.It turned out to be drug resistant TB so they were quite a long time in hospital. My daughter was found to have what's called latent TB.It was explained to my daughter as the TB is encapsulated/sleeping + to avoid getting run down/ ill as it can let the TB flourish. They were also told if it hadn't developed within 5 years it possibly never would. They had asked the entire class to come in for regular xrays +hardly anyone did! They will probably always test positive tho. They are absolutely fine + nothing ever developed from it.

Do you live in a city? London and Leicester are both TB hotspots.

Hope the treatment goes smoothly

Yes we are in London. I was hesitant to say that in case it went off on an immigration tangent but I know it does make sense for a large city with enclosed public transport systems and lots of international travellers to have higher rates of anything contagious.

The idea it could be a drug resistant strain really scares me!

He is at the hospital now and everything is quiet in terms of communication from him currently. We are just waiting to hear something.

bcg only appears effective for the systemic kind, not the pulmonary kind in adults.

everyone in your household might need to be tested/treated. school/work might need to be told.

the good news is that it needs prolonged, very close contact to transmit.

Hi - this must be a very worrying time for you. I was in the same position over a decade ago although it did have a bizarre twist…

DP had cough for ages and was losing weight. He kept saying it was his asthma but I made him insist on an x-ray. He could from the moment it was done that something was very wrong (the radiographer seemed concerned). A few days later tests confirmed TB and we all had to attend hospital (Inc newborn which was fun). Started process of isolation, treatment and identifying close contacts.

Then the lab results came back as inconclusive rather than the TB originally diagnosed. They retested and inconclusive again. We started doing our own research and guessed it was a mycobacterium instead. And we were right - DP had picked up kansasii, probably through river swimming. He was on antibiotics for a long time but made a full recovery

Our town was a hot spot area a few years back, we’ve always had a higher than average infection rate. This was from decades of large numbers of immigrants from an Asian country, where they didn’t routinely vaccinate. The local health service did a big drive on vaccinations which reduced it, although at one point we apparently had a higher infection rate of TB than covid! I don’t know how true that actually was though.

I know what you mean about it feeling like an old fashioned disease! But it seems like it’s something they can treat well now.

Yes I had it a few years ago.

I never got my BCG as my 6 needles activated so at the time I was told I was immune to TB - what this actually meant was that I was already infected with latent TB.

Can only think I got it from unpasturised milk.

Then I started losing quite a lot of weight quickly for about 6 months and felt rubbish, sweaty, shaky, ill to my stomach. Coincidentally I needed a TB test to start biological therapy for an autoimmune disease and it came back positive. I had gastrointestinal TB.

I had 6 months on 2 quite strong antibiotics. They themselves weren't too bad but having to be unmedicated for my AI disease was pretty rough for the 6 months.

The hospital appointments were quite regular, every 2 weeks I believe for bloods as the drugs are quite potent. But once discharged I've never had to see the department again and feel that chapter is closed.

My Auntie and Uncle actually met on a TB ward when they were 18/19
years old. Ended up marrying eachother. My Uncle passes away aged 89, my Auntie has just celebrated her 90th birthday, and she's really good for her age. They know so much more now, so try and hold on that.

My Auntie grew up in a poor household of eight, the four girls shared a double bed. No one else in the family caught it before she was isolated from them.

Friends uncle got it, not sure the strain, but GP said there were a number of cases, SE London.

OP, forgot to say hope your DH is OK. He properly just needs to rest right now. No one has done anything wrong, it's sadly one of those things. Also, my Auntie and Uncle still had a full life, despite having TB, and medical teams had far less knowledge then.

Hi OP, I hope your husband is back from the hospital and is doing OK.

To answer your question, yes, I've had TB. It was a total shock, as I am so far out of the usual "at risk" groups. Mine came to light when I developed a stabbing pain in my chest if I inhaled deeply. Possibly a slight cough but nothing of note, no weight loss or anything like that. After a few days of the stabby pain, I suddenly started coughing up a lot of blood. Off to A&E where I had a chest x-ray and then a ward admission while they ran tests and did a CT and bronchoscopy etc. Discharged home and told to isolate until they confirmed what it was, then had a call from the TB clinic a couple of weeks later to tell me the news.

I was started off on four types of antibiotics: Isoniazid and Pyrazinamide for two months then stopped plus Rifampicin and Ethambutol which were to be for the whole six months. At my two month appointment I then had a slight complication, as the initial samples I'd given at hospital had by then grown a mycobacterium as well as the TB (these are slower growing). This meant that I added Clarithromycin into my mix of pills, and the treatment extended from 6 months to 18 😫 The antibiotics were fairly heavy-duty - lots of pills at different times of the day, but they didn't particularly affect me apart from an allergic reaction when I started the initial doses. I had to ramp-up the dosing over several weeks (it was either the Isoniazid or the Pyrazinamide that caused it, I forget which).

The TB clinic did a track and trace and close family members had to be tested / x-rayed, but all were clear thankfully. DH and the DCs all had vaccinations too. The clinic kept a really close eye on me, with monthly blood tests and suchlike to check that the antibiotics weren't damaging my liver. I also had regular chest x-rays and appointments with the consultant over the course of the 18 months (it would have been mouch shorter had it just been the TB). After 18 months I had another CT which confirmed it had all gone and I was discharged.

It's a total mystery where I caught it from. They did DNA testing on the TB and said the closest match was a case approx 10 years previously in a neighbouring region. I don't fit any of the typical profiles for TB patients (i.e. not likely exposed through work or travel, not part of a community where it's more prevalent...). I'm the complete opposite of your average TB patient! The mycobacterium is a similar mystery... There was a suspicion that I'd had latent TB for ages and it had been activated for some reason - possibly the minor covid infection that I'd had about 6 months previously.

I've been clear for 3 years now and, touch wood, no lasting effects. I'm still twitchy every time I get a cough (I keep checking for the stabby pain...). It did knock me for six when I had it - the week in hospital where I was coughing up blood and they didn't know why was up there with the some of the most traumatic days of my life. The diagnosis itself was a mixture of relief (that it wasn't anything more sinister), bewilderment at how I'd got it, and apprehension about the 6 months of treatment. I'm glad I didn't know at the start it was actually going to be 18 months of treatment!

I hope this has given you a bit of insight, OP. It's a scary time but ultimately something that can be treated and something that, in the majority of cases, has no lasting impact. Good luck and I hope your DH is feeling OK.

It's a bit of a shock to read this thread; I assumed TB was rare these days.

My mother was orphaned at a very young age as both her parent died with TB within months of each other. This was in the 30's before the war, and none of her relatives really wanted to take her or her sister for fear of infecting their own families. They ended up in an orphanage but eventually went with relatives when they didn't appear to be infected.

Thank goodness for modern medicine and drugs; I hope your husband makes a good recovery.

Unfortunately, cases in the UK have been rising for a number of years. Most are patients born outside of the UK in countries where it's more prevalent, and there are hotposts around the country where it circulates in the community. As a teenager I had the BCG vaccination but found out to my cost that protection wanes after a period of time. I was also surprised to hear that BCG is no longer offered to the general population as part of the routine vaccinations programme. So fewer people have protection against a background of higher prevalence, so it's no wonder cases are on the up and starting to seep out of the traditionally "at risk" communities. I didn't tick any box for typical risk factors and it's a complete mystery where I got it from. It sounds as though OP's husband is in a similar boat.

https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj.s471

BBC News - Birmingham health bosses act after rising number of TB cases - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y5rn6w5exo?app-referrer=deep-link

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/29/england-undiagnosed-tuberculosis-tb

My friend had it 20+ years ago. The medical staff thought she'd caught it at work as her job involved contact with many foreign students. She had a bad back and had x-rays and the TB showed up. She was off work for a few months and had antibiotics for a long time but she's been fine since. Very energetic and healthy.

25% of the world has TB.

Including my dad!

It'll be fine.

Oh, and the BCG jab is rubbish, which is why not every area bothers anymore.

It's success rate is only 50% - really low for an immunisation, so it can't be relied on.

A relative (mid 70s) had it a few years ago. They thought he had had it since childhood which was very poor in rural Ireland. Though he does live in Leicester now so maybe it was more recent.