ATLANTA - U.S. health officials say a globe-trotting lawyer who caused an international scare by travelling while infected with tuberculosis has a less severe form of the disease than previously thought.
Andrew Speaker was diagnosed in May with extensively drug resistant TB, based on a CDC analysis of a bronchoscopy sample taken in March.
The XDR-TB, as it is called, is considered dangerously difficult to treat.
But a series of sputum samples have all shown his TB to be a milder form of the disease -- multidrug-resistant TB -- a federal health official said on a condition of anonymity.
A formal announcement is planned for later today.
Multidrug-resistant TB can be treated with some antibiotics that the more severe form resists.
William Allstetter, a spokesman at the Denver hospital where Speaker is being treated, says the reclassification relates to drugs that have been tested to treat Speaker's tuberculosis.
He says doctors will announce changes in Speaker's treatment regime at an afternoon news conference.
Speaker was originally diagnosed with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis -- which can withstand mainline antibiotics used to treat TB -- before he left for a wedding and honeymoon in Europe. While there, he was told he had extremely drug-resistant TB, which resists even more drugs.
U.S. health officials said Speaker ignored their warnings to seek help in Europe. Instead, Speaker and his wife returned to North America on a commercial flight through Canada and he was briefly placed under federal quarantine.
The incident prompted a hunt for passengers on the transatlantic flights taken by Speaker so they could be tested for the disease.
