IT is a disease that affects thousands across the country and yet gets negligible attention. India as a country has 25 per cent of the world’s tuberculosis cases, a statistic that according to experts is only increasing. To date, the disease remains a major cause of death in rural India.

In a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology this month, it was found that smoking and drinking significantly increased the risk of pulmonary tuberculosis.

The study analysed 1,839 men and 870 women in the Tiruvallur District of Tamil Nadu all of whom had been treated in state-run TB clinics between the years 2000 and 2003. Of these, a majority of the men had both smoked and drank while none of the women had. About 81.5 per cent of the men who were diagnosed with new cases of pulmonary TB were smokers, while the figure for a control group of participants was only 55.2 per cent.

Director of the Epidemiological Research Centre Dr Gajalakshmi Vendhan, who is one of the authors of the study, said that they found a high per centage of men who smoked beedis which the study found to independently increase the risk of TB, severe enough to warrant treatment.

“We found that 71 per cent of men in the age group 35-64 smoked only beedies. The average number smoked by them per day is 17,” she said. Cigarette smokers of the same age group, were found to be considerably less at only 28 per cent and the average numbers of cigarettes smoked was seven a day, she said.

The result found that people who smoked had a 2.2 more chance of contracting the diseases than those who did not. The risk increased to 2.4 if the smoked product was beedies.

On alcohol use, the authors found that the two habit were strongly linked. Nearly all of the study participants who drank were also found to smoke, so the effects the two habits independently had on a risk of TB were difficult to disentangle, the study said. However, the authors found that those who drank had 1.5 more chances of developing TB.

The link between tobacco and TB has long been at the heart of the anti tobacco campaigner’s programmes.

Cardiologist Dr. Hisamuddin Papa said the country was seeing an increasing number of cases of Extremely Drug Resistant TB (XDR TB) that could pose extremely dangerous as it has no cure. “TB is an old disease with drugs to cure it but lack of adherence to treatment and lack of active diagnosis of cases and prevention has led us to this,” he said.