After successful drug treatment of tuberculosis, there is usually no or only a very low risk of a new outbreak of the disease.

It is known that some immunosuppressive drugs, i.e. drugs that suppress the immune system, can increase the risk of an outbreak of tuberculosis if you are latently infected with tuberculosis bacteria. This risk is best described for TNF-alpha inhibitors. Therefore, tuberculosis should always be ruled out before such therapy and a latent tuberculosis infection should be treated preventively. For other immunosuppressive drugs, such as long-term cortisone treatment with higher doses (>20mg/day), an individual risk-benefit assessment is required, in which various factors such as the severity of the underlying disease and the planned therapy, age, the expected rate of side effects and possible alternative therapies must be taken into account.