HIV and TB in the U.S. — More Than a Decade of Progress

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the number of tuberculosis (TB) cases in the U.S. increased by 20% after declining for more than 30 years. Several factors were responsible for this resurgence of TB, but the emerging HIV epidemic was probably the most important. In 1993, the federal government began allocating additional resources for TB control, and, in 1996, potent antiretroviral therapy became widely available. Consequently, the incidence of both TB and AIDS began to decline steadily. In the present study, investigators evaluated trends in TB/HIV comorbidity, using nationwide data from all incident cases of TB that were reported to the CDC from 1993 through 2004.

The annual number of new TB cases declined from 42,536 in 1993 to 20,6…