Health care professionals please respond. My TB skin test was positive. Do I risk taking the meds?

After 20 years as a Respiratory Therapist, and every year, testing went well This time the test was possitive! I have a weak immune system from a long term chemical exposure at the hospital years ago. The occupational health Doc. says I must go on antibiotic therapy for 6 months, this med is very toxic to the liver most of the time patients develop nonspecific hepetitsis from it and I am not to even take tylonol while taking the drug. The drug is meant to incapsulate the TB particals in my lung, to prevent it from becoming an active form of TB. At this point it is only an exposure. After the +skin test I found that over 1/2 of my department tested positive years ago and never did the treatment, just a lung x-ray yearly. I know I am highly suseptable to everything and 20 times more likely to develop cancer than others because of immunities and immuture T cells. I am very concerned about this and would like input. Web sites welcome. Anything! What would you do?

I personally would not start the drug regimen on the basis of a positive TB skin test.

I would insist on a chest x-ray and/or a sputum culture. Only if one of those showed positive for TB would I begin the meds.

It's to be expected that you would have been exposed to TB often enough that your skin test would read positive. But whether you actually have TB has yet to be determined.

Discuss your concerns with a TB or infectious disease specialist. There could be complications due to your weaken immune system. If you are still working as a respiratory therapist, you could be endangering not only your clients, but your job if you do not take the treatment.

Need a CXR. If that is suspicious then yes you need to be on something. Many people test positive.

I thought that if you were diagnosed with TB you had to take the prescribed treatment, that it was *against the law* to fail to do so.

Perhaps I was misinformed.