This another note of the type mentioned earlier.

The earlier mentioned

caveats apply here too. These are simplistic and superficial
examinations of the issues being considered.

Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis an

actinobacterium and is predominantly transmitted by means of aerosol
expelled from the respiratory tract of patients with pulmonary
infection. Very few live bacteria are sufficient to establish
infection in a new host. AIDS is caused by HIV-1 and HIV-2 which are
related retroviruses of lentivirus clade. It is predominantly sexually
transmitted although other kinds of transmission via blood products
and mother to child are also possible. TB is a disease known from the
earliest human record. In Hindu tradition we find its earliest mention
in the Atharvan collection (the yakma-skta-s; e.g. AV-vulgate 2.33)
and might have been discovered by the great brhmaa Kayapa. The
disease balsa described by the Atharvan-s also seems likely to have
been osseous TB, which has also been noted in approximately coeval
Egyptians. AIDS has a more murky medical history. Its origins can be
squarely placed in Africa where both forms appear to have emerged from
related retroviruses infecting chimpanzees (HIV-1) and the mangabey
monkey (HIV-2). Its world-wide spread is something which has happened
very recently in the aftermath of the European penetration of sub-
Saharan Africa. Yet these two diseases are believed to have gotten
entangled because HIV suppresses immune system of the host by
targeting the CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells which are
cells central to the immune response itself. This is an interesting
evolutionary phenomenon with some deep ramifications. The weakening of
the immune system by AIDS is said to facilitate opportunistic
infection by M.tuberculosis.

This supposed connection between the two diseases made us check out
the actual data:
-The incidence of TB is from WHO for year 2012
-The incidence of HIV is from WHO for year 2012
-The other data is from UN for the latest available year.
-The incidence of HIV is based on those being recorded as going for
antiretroviral treatment drugs, so it is an underestimate of the
actual number( e.g. Bangladesh in this data).

TB_vs_AIDS
Figure 1

The number of TB and HIV incidences are positively correlated across

175 countries in a log-log plot of this data (Figure 1). The
correlation has r^2=0.456 and slope is 0.662 (indicating scaling as
roughly power 2/3). This is consistent with the pathological
entanglement of the two diseases but the correlation is not very high
suggesting that they have their own independent spheres of action.
Indeed, TB was already a widespread disease with large pool of
infections ages before AIDS became a global issue and retained that
network even after the somewhat effective vaccination and debilitating
antibiotic treatments emerged for it.

TB_vs_Pop
Figure 2

We next looked at how the incidences of TB scale with population of a

country (Figure 2) in a log-log plot. One notices that the two are
strongly positively correlated (r^2=0.774) and slope 1.14722
indicating a nearly linear relationship between the two. This suggests
that irrespective of the population size and continent the country
comes from there an approximately fixed incidence of TB for a unit of
human population (median value of ratio of TB incidences to population
\approx 4.5 \times 10^{-4} ).

AIDS_vs_Pop
Figure 3

When we do the same for AIDS we seen an interesting difference (Figure

3). The two are again positively correlated in the log-log plot with a
slope of 0.93 suggesting an approximately linear correlation of the
number of incidences of AIDS with population size. However, the
correlation is much weaker than what is seen for TB: (r^2=0.454). What
could be the reasons for this? We chose to take a closer look at these
two diseases because currently they can infect people pretty much
anywhere via regular human activities such as coughing, spitting or
sex. They are not dependent on a special predisposing factors like
malaria which needs a vector with a geographically localized
distribution. Hence, we would say that the weaker correlation for AIDS
reflects a fundamental differences in the regular human activities
like sex. Right away one can see that African countries have pretty
much distinctly higher incidences of AIDS that Asian countries with
comparable populations. A major factor in this could be the greater
tendency for risky sexual behavior arising from the promiscuous mating
systems in Africa as compared to Asia. This contention is supported by
the two exceptions in Asia, Thailand and Cambodia, which are known to
be centers of risky sexual activities.