Western diet, diabetes could spawn tuberculosis epidemic

New research suggests people with diabetes are three times more likely to contract tuberculosis, worrying health officials that growing waistlines might spark the comeback of a disease long on the decline in the U.S. and around the world.
Despite TB's decline in previous decades, the disease still affects millions of people each year. In 2013, nine million people were diagnosed with the bacterial disease which primarily attacks the lungs. More than 1.5 million died from it.
Now, experts at the World Health Organization and elsewhere worry efforts to control the sometimes deadly disease could be affected by rising obesity and diabetes rates around the world. Because TB strains aren't exactly uncommon -- as many as a third of world's population are carrying the germ -- and because diabetes suppresses the immune system, there's the very real possibility of a co-epidemic.
That reality becomes more likely as more and more nations adopt a more Westernized diet, higher in fat and sugar -- and ultimately higher in diabetes rates.
In a white paper submitted at the 45th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Barcelona, held last month, researchers wrote that: "Diabetes is fueling the spread of TB."
"Having diabetes increases the risk that a person will become sick with TB," the report continued. "Diabetes is also more difficult to manage in people who have TB. And a person sick with both diseases is likely to have complications that do not typically exist when either is present on its own."
"Diabetes reduces peoples immunity," echoed Dr. Anthony Harries, a senior adviser to the International Union who recently told CNN a compromised immune system would be more susceptible to the threat of latent TB germs.
"Globally we have about 2 billion people with latent TB," said Harries. "Put diabetes into that equation and you immediately see there is a problem."
Harries and others say we already have an idea of what a co-epidemic looks like, as TB and HIV devastated many African communities over the last two decades. Health officials must act fast, experts say, to prevent the same from happening with TB and diabetes.
They can do so by targeting preventative care and early testing work in countries expected to experience an uptick in diabetes rates, including India, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and Russia. Health officials expect that by 2035, 592 million people will be living with diabetes.