Last Updated on June 19, 2022 by Shabnam Sengupta
It depends on whether a person has active or latent tuberculosis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 45% of tuberculosis patients who are HIV-negative and nearly all HIV-positive people with tuberculosis (TB) will die in the absence of proper treatment.
The National Jewish Health website states, “Inadequate therapy for TB can lead to drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis that are even more difficult to treat”. Tuberculosis can kill about a half of the patients in a span of 5 years and can cause serious illness in others without treatment.
About 85% of all the tuberculosis cases are of Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB), out of which the smear positive PTB comprises 75–80 %. Moreover, the Medecins Sans Frontieres website notes that tuberculosis can be severe and potentially fatal without treatment. The website further provided estimated percentages for the outcome of smear-positive pulmonary TB (PTB) in non-HIV-infected patients after 5 years without treatment. The percentages are 50 to 60% die (case fatality ratio (CFR) for untreated TB), 20 to 25% are cured (spontaneous cure) and 20 to 25% continue to have symptoms.
On the other hand, people with latent tuberculosis never develop the disease because the bacteria mycobacterium tuberculosis remains inactive for a lifetime. For latent tuberculosis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website suggests that nearly 5 to 10 percent of infected people will develop tuberculosis eventually. Out of these, half of them will develop TB within the first two years of infection. The risk of tuberculosis is considerably high for the people who have weak or compromised immune systems, especially people who have HIV infection as compared to people with normal immune systems. Once latent tuberculosis becomes active, it follows the same timeline as discussed earlier in this answer.
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