Test results on Andrew Speaker offered good news Tuesday for anyone – including airplane passengers – possibly exposed to his drug-resistant tuberculosis, doctors say.
Still, “no one who came in contact with him is out of the woods at this juncture,” said Dr. Charles Daley, a National Jewish Medical and Research Center physician treating Speaker.
Since Speaker arrived at the hospital Thursday, doctors have done three “sputum smear” tests on the 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer. The results of the third test were released Tuesday.
All three have been negative, meaning doctors have not been able to see any TB bacteria under a microscope.
That does not mean Speaker doesn’t have TB, nor does it mean he is not contagious, Daley said Tuesday.
The hospital relies on a more exacting test, in which TB bacteria are grown in a lab, to make a diagnosis.
“All patients undergoing treatment for TB are infectious to some degree,” Daley said.
Speaker’s results probably indicate that “he has not been very infectious,” Daley said.
The results also mean that the patient might be allowed to walk around the hospital – in a protective facial mask – after he completes two weeks of drug therapy, Daley said.
“Generally, it is very important for mental well-being to get out of those rooms,” Daley said.
Speaker may be a prisoner of his fame as well as his disease.
“We don’t want him to go outside if there’s a lot of people here ready to accost him,” Daley said.
Speaker is taking a variety of antibiotics, including many not typically used against TB, to fight his rare, extensively drug resistant, or XDR TB, strain.
It will be several weeks before doctors know whether those drugs are effective.
Speaker arrived at National Jewish last week, days after he returned from his European wedding and honeymoon, and after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took the extraordinary step of putting him under an isolation order.
That order has been lifted, replaced by one issued by Denver’s public health department.
The three negative sputum tests will be a factor working in his favor when Speaker’s doctors and public health officials consider whether to lift that order, said Dr. Randall Reves, medical director for Denver’s TB control program.
The orders tend to remain until “we’re convinced there’s no potential harm for the public,” Reves said. “We tend to be a bit more cautious with multi-drug resistant TB,” he said.
The next step in Speaker’s treatment will be to determine whether he should have surgery to remove what one of his physicians, Dr. Gwen Huitt, has described as a tennis-ball-sized lesion on his lung.
That decision could come this week, although surgery would not be for weeks, Daley said.
Speaker has been very cooperative. “He wants to do whatever it takes to get better,” Daley said. “We couldn’t ask for a better patient.”
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
