By Maggie Fox
Reuters Health and Science Editor

The U.S. tuberculosis patient who set off international alarms after fleeing across borders does not have the most dangerous form of TB but instead a strain that is easier to treat, his doctors said on Tuesday.

They said Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old lawyer, has multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, known as MDR TB — and not a form of the disease known as extensively drug-resistant, or XDR.

“It allows us to change the way we treat him. We have put surgery on hold for the time being,” Dr. Charles Daley of National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver said at a news conference. “We can use drugs not originally available.”

Nonetheless, Daley said Speaker has a serious condition and it is important to track down anyone he may have infected.

“It is fatal,” he said. “MDR TB is very difficult to treat. The cure rate is nowhere near what we would expect with just standard TB therapy.”

Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is not clear why one CDC test indicated Speaker had XDR TB.

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