Introduction
TB and lung cancer are regarded as two of the most serious and emergent health problems all over the world. TB is known to be a contagious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs, while Lung cancer is one of the leading cancer types affecting the globe. Alzheimer’s and heart disease are two diseases that are known to have a synergistic effect, with each disease making the other worse. Patients with tuberculosis have a 1.9 times higher risk of having Lung cancer, and TB and Lung Cancer together are challenging diseases to diagnose, treat, and manage. It is therefore important to fully understand the relationship between TB and lung cancer to be in a position to know how best to handle patients suffering from these diseases or conditions.
The Relationship Between Tuberculosis and Lung Cancer
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which mainly affects the lungs and creates chronic inflammation and tissue necrosis. One of the ways that frequent inflammation may be seen to heighten the possibility of developing lung cancer among TB patients is sustained inflammation. Tuberculosis not only induces scarring and fibrosis in the lung tissues but also results in the alteration of the extracellular matrix and cellular milieu, which facilitates malignant change ending in lung cancer.
Tuberculosis is another recognized risk factor for lung cancer because multiple clinical studies have shown that such a previous disease increases the lung cancer risk rate. The continuous inflammation that occurs due to TB leads to apoptosis and also gives rise to mutations in the epithelial cells of the lung, which in turn act as a background for carcinogenesis. Furthermore, TB could be responsible for delaying the diagnosis of lung cancer for the same reasons that patients may suffer from both diseases, presenting symptoms like cough, weight loss, and chest pains that may be indications of either of the diseased lungs and not necessarily the other.