Tuberculosis, or TB:

is an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium

tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs. It is transmitted from person to person via droplets from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease. In healthy people, infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis often causes no symptoms, since the person's immune system acts to wall off the bacteria. The symptoms of active TB of the lung are coughing, sometimes with sputum or blood, chest pains, weakness, weight loss, fever and night sweats.

Diagnosis:
The diagnosis of TB involves skin tests, chest X-rays, sputum analysis (smear and culture), and New TB test has been developed that is fast and accurate which is PCR (polymerase chain reaction) assays for the detection of bacterial DNA(the genetic material of the causative bacteria) . One such molecular diagnostics test gives results in 100 minutes and is currently being offered to 116 low- and middle-income countries ** I think PCR Assay the test which was used with your relative

Progression:
Most infections in humans result in an asymptomatic, latent infection, and about one in ten latent infections eventually progress to active disease, which occurs when the TB bacilli overcome the immune system defenses and begin to multiply. However, in the majority of cases, a latent infection occurs that has no obvious symptoms

Transmission:
****Transmission can only occur from people with activenot latentTB The chain of transmission can be broken by isolating people with active disease and starting effective anti-tuberculous therapy. After two weeks of such treatment, people with nonresistant active TB generally cease to be contagious. If someone does become infected, then it will take three to four weeks before the newly infected person can transmit the disease to others.

Treatment:
Tuberculosis is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics. The result after completed treatment, whether with bacteriologic evidence of success (cured) or without (treatment completed) .

Treatment for TB uses antibiotics to kill the bacteria. Effective TB treatment is difficult, due to the unusual structure and chemical composition of the mycobacterial cell wall, which makes many antibiotics ineffective and hinders the entry of drugs. The two antibiotics most commonly used are isoniazid and rifampicin and treatments can be prolonged. Latent TB treatment usually uses a single antibiotic, while active TB disease is best treated with combinations of several antibiotics, to reduce the risk of the bacteria developing antibiotic resistance. People with latent infections are treated to prevent them from progressing to active TB disease later in life.

The recommended treatment of new onset pulmonary tuberculosis as of 2010 is six months of a combination of antibiotic containing rifampin along isoniazid, pyrazinamide and ethambutol for the first two months and with just isoniazid for the last four months.[7] Where resistance to insoniazid is high ethambutol may be added for the last four months.[7]

Vaccine:
The only currently available vaccine as of 2011 is Bacillus Calmette-Gurin (BCG) which while effective against disseminated disease in childhood confers inconsistent protection against pulmonary disease .

How our body deal with T.B :

Tuberculosis is classified as one of the granulomatous inflammatory conditions. Macrophages, T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, and fibroblasts are among the cells that aggregate to form granulomas, with lymphocytes surrounding the infected macrophages. The granuloma prevents dissemination of the mycobacteria and provides a local environment for interaction of cells of the immune system. Bacteria inside the granuloma can become dormant, resulting in a latent infection. Another feature of the granulomas of human tuberculosis is the development of abnormal cell death (necrosis) in the center of tubercles. To the naked eye this has the texture of soft white cheese and is termed caseous necrosis. If TB bacteria gain entry to the bloodstream from an area of damaged tissue they spread through the body and set up many site of infection and became active T.B

General info
the risk of reactivation increases with immunosuppression, such as that caused by infection with HIV.

The age-adjusted incidence rate of TB attributable to reinfection after successful treatment was four times that of new TB. People who had TB once are at a strongly increased risk of developing TB when reinfected. ((Rate of Reinfection Tuberculosis after Successful Treatment Is Higher than Rate of New Tuberculosis .))

the answer of your question was :

Q1 Could T.B be not-contiguous ? A1 Yes, It could since Transmission can only occur from people with activenot latent TB . Q2- after treatment might be a curable? A2- yes, might be since Tuberculosis is treatable with a six-month course of antibiotics.

Q3- might be recurrent? A3- not Usually , But you should put in Your consideration that Rate of Reinfection Tuberculosis after Successful Treatment Is Higher than Rate of New Tuberculosis. I Hope this was useful Best regards Laith