Childhood Tuberculosis Cases Rising in Europe and Central Asia

A worrying consequence of the mainstream media’s obsessive coverage of COVID-19 over the past five years is that deaths from other major infectious diseases have essentially been ignored. A notable example is that of tuberculosis (TB), a disease that over 1 million people continue to die from each year. Drug-resistant tuberculosis is a major contributor to antimicrobial resistance worldwide and continues to be a significant public health threat.

Promisingly, therefore, acknowledging that TB remains one of the world’s top infectious killers, a scientific review published in 2021 examined the role of vitamins in its prevention and treatment. Not only did the authors suggest and encourage the use of vitamins against TB, they concluded that using them may significantly improve outcomes.

Published in the journal Antibiotics by researchers from Italy, the paper examined the impact of vitamin A, vitamin B complex, vitamin C, vitamin D, and vitamin E on TB infection. Noting that low levels of micronutrients are commonly observed among TB patients, the researchers suggested that supplementing with multiple micronutrients may be beneficial against the disease.

Even prior to this study, previous research had already demonstrated that vitamin E deficiency is associated with an increased risk of contracting TB and that vitamin D speeds up the clearance of TB bacteria from the lungs of people with multi-drug resistant forms of the disease. Research also suggests that high concentrations of vitamin C can effectively kill the bacteria responsible for TB.

To learn more about the clinical benefits of micronutrients in TB, see this article on our website.