Tuberculosis

INTRODUCTION: Microorganisms of clinical importance frequently develop resistance to drug therapy, now a growing problem. The experience with Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a representative example of increasing multi-drug resistance. To avoid reaching a crisis in which patients could be left without adequate treatment, a new strategy is needed. Anti-microbial therapy has historically targeted the mechanisms rather than origin of drug resistance, thus allowing microorganisms to adapt and survive...

The dreadful disease malaria is one among the infectious diseases that comes in third number after the tuberculosis and HIV. This disease is spread by female Anopheles mosquito and caused by the malarial parasite sp notably Plasmodium falciparum . In this, the organism has several enzymes for processing the infection and growth mechanism and among that, the adenylosuccinate lyase is an enzyme that plays a critical role in metabolism and cellular replication via its action in the de novo purine biosynthetic pathway...

INTRODUCTION: Preventive therapy is essential for reducing tuberculosis (TB) burden among people living with HIV (PLWH) in high-burden settings. Short-course preventive therapy regimens, such as three-month weekly rifapentine and isoniazid (3HP) and one-month daily rifapentine and isoniazid (1HP), may help facilitate uptake of preventive therapy for latently infected patients, but the comparative cost-effectiveness of these regimens under different conditions is uncertain. METHODS: We used a Markov state-transition model to estimate the incremental costs and effectiveness of 1HP versus 3HP in a simulated cohort of patients attending an HIV clinic in Uganda, as an example of a low-income, high-burden setting in which TB preventive therapy might be prescribed to PLWH...

In tuberculosis (TB) endemic countries like India, this is a common practice to attribute patient's illness to TB even without microbiological confirmation. Furthermore, a false diagnosis may prove fatal as the underlying disease is left untreated, and the burden is amplified by avoidable potential side effects of antitubercular drugs. We present a case of a 42-year-old female who presented to us with a typical presentation of disseminated TB but found to have metastatic thyroid carcinoma.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( Mtb ) infection is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) vaccine vector expressing the mycobacterial antigen 85A (MVA85A) was demonstrated to be safe, although it did not improve BCG efficacy, denoting the need to search for improved tuberculosis vaccines. In this work, we investigated the effect of IL-12 DNA -as an adjuvant- on an Ag85A DNA prime/MVA85A boost vaccination regimen. We evaluated the immune response profile elicited in mice and the protection conferred against intratracheal Mtb H37Rv challenge...

Tuberculosis (TB) was responsible for more deaths in 2019 than any other infectious agent. This epidemic is exacerbated by the ongoing development of multi-drug resistance and HIV co-infection. Recent studies have therefore focused on identifying host-directed therapies (HDTs) that can be used in combination with anti-mycobacterial drugs to shorten the duration of TB treatment and improve TB outcomes. In searching for effective HDTs for TB, studies have looked toward immunometabolism, the study of the role of metabolism in host immunity and, in particular, the Warburg effect...

This case reports rare findings on computed tomography of a manifestation of malignant lymphoma, in which diffuse lung shadows appeared as miliary nodules distributed throughout the lungs bilaterally. The patient had a history of surgical treatment of rectal cancer and had received chemotherapy for suspicious liver metastasis. At her current presentation for evaluation suspected miliary tuberculosis on chest radiography, subsequent liver biopsy revealed a mass infiltration of atypical lymphocytes, which was diagnosed as follicular lymphoma...

Cannabis is a historical plant which has been used as a medicine in East Asia. These days, there are active debates about using cannabis in clinical field. Collecting and comparing cannabis research articles which had been published in the Opening of Japan to spot the interactions between the traditional medicine of Japan, Rangaku which was established in Edo Period and the European medicine which is transferred after Perry Expedition is academically meaningful. This study searched publications, which were listed on Open-Access databases by Dec...

The disease tuberculosis is fatal if untreated. It is caused by the acid-fast bacilli Mycobacterium tuberculosis . Mycobacterium resides and replicates within the alveolar macrophages, causing inflammation and granuloma, wherein macrophage-T cell interactions enhance the inflammation-causing pulmonary caseous lesions. The first interactions between Mycobacterium and the receptors on macrophages decide the fate of Mycobacterium because of phagolysosomal impairments and the expression of several miRNAs, which may regulate CD40 expression on macrophages...

Tuberculosis (TB) is associated with systemic inflammation and anemia, which are aggravated in persons living with HIV (PLWH). Here, we characterized the dynamics of hemoglobin levels in PLWH coinfected with TB undergoing antitubercular therapy (ATT). We also examined the relationships between anemia and systemic inflammatory disturbance as well as the association between persistent anemia and unfavorable clinical outcomes. Data on several blood biochemical parameters and on blood cell counts were retrospectively analyzed in a cohort of 256 TB/HIV patients from Brazil during 180 days of ATT...

This study evaluated the performance of the Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra assay (Xpert Ultra) to detect smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). Xpert Ultra assay was prospectively performed using bronchial washing fluid (BWF) in comparison to COBAS TaqMan MTB (COBAS) assay and mycobacterial culture. Of the 165 enrolled participants, 27 (16.4%) had PTB based on composite reference standard and 16 (9.7%) had culture-confirmed PTB. By the composite reference standard of PTB, the sensitivity of Xpert Ultra (63.0, 95% confidence interval, CI, 42...

Despite the discovery of the tubercle bacillus more than 130 years ago, its physiology and the mechanisms of virulence are still not fully understood. A comprehensive analysis of the proteomes of members of the human-adapted Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) lineages 3, 4, 5, and 7 was conducted to better understand the evolution of virulence and other physiological characteristics. Unique and shared proteomic signatures in these modern, pre-modern and ancient MTBC lineages, as deduced from quantitative bioinformatics analyses of high-resolution mass spectrometry data, were delineated...

The upsurge and persistence of drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is an important limitant to the battery of drugs available for the elimination of tuberculosis (TB). To avoid future scarcity of antibiotics against Mtb, it is important to discover new effective anti-mycobacterial agents. In this study, we present data from a series of experiments to determine in vitro and in vivo anti-mycobacterial activity of a library of epidioxy-sterol analogs. We test 15 compounds for their ability to reduce the viability of Mtb...

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Tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) still remains the deadliest infectious disease worldwide with 1.5 million deaths in 2018, of which about 15% are attributed to resistant strains. Another significant example is Mycobacterium abscessus (M. abscessus), a nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) responsible for cutaneous and pulmonary infections, representing up to 95% of NTM infections in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. M. abscessus is a new clinically relevant pathogen and is considered one of the most drug-resistant mycobacteria for which standardized chemotherapeutic regimens are still lacking...

OBJECTIVE: To determine the association between food insecurity and HIV-infection with depression and anxiety among new tuberculosis patients. DESIGN: Our cross-sectional study assessed depression, anxiety, and food insecurity with Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ9), Zung Anxiety Self-Assessment Scale (ZUNG), and Household Food Insecurity Access Scale, respectively. Poisson regression models with robust variance were used to examine correlates of depression (PHQ9 ≥ 10) and anxiety (ZUNG ≥ 36)...

Macroautophagy/autophagy delivers cytoplasmic cargo to lysosomes for degradation. In yeast, the single Atg8 protein plays a role in the formation of autophagosomes whereas in mammalian cells there are five to seven paralogs, referred to as mammalian Atg8s (mAtg8s: GABARAP, GABARAPL1, GABARAPL2, LC3A, LC3B, LC3B2 and LC3C) with incompletely defined functions. Here we show that a subset of mAtg8s directly control lysosomal biogenesis. This occurs at the level of TFEB, the principal regulator of the lysosomal transcriptional program...

AIMS: Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), is now the leading cause of death from infectious disease, thus rapid diagnostic and screening techniques for TB are urgently needed. METHODS AND RESULTS: Here, a detection of MTB using multiple cross displacement amplification coupling with nanoparticles-based lateral flow device (MCDA-LFD) was developed and validated, targeting the specific sdaA gene. The whole detection procedure, including rapid genomic DNA extraction (15 min), amplification (30 min), and result reporting (2 min), was completed within 50 min...

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs)-anti-programmed death-1 (PD-1) and their ligands (PD-L1 and PD-L2) have become widely used in the treatment of several malignancies. Many immune-related adverse events (irAEs) have been linked to these agents. Nonetheless, tuberculosis (TB) reactivation during their use is increasingly recognized and reported. Herein, we present a 58-year-old lady with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) ALK-negative, EGFR wild, and PD-L1 immune histochemistry (IHC) strongly positive in 95% of tumor cells, on ongoing treatment with Pembrolizumab as a first-line monotherapy...

BACKGROUND: Prospective studies correlating pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) indices to clinical responses are urgently needed. This study aimed to find clinically relevant PK/PD thresholds that can be used for treatment optimization. METHODS: Pharmacokinetic sampling and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) measurements were performed for culture-confirmed tuberculosis patients. Classification and regression tree (CART) analysis was applied to obtain PK and/or PD thresholds for first-line drugs predictive of two-week/month culture conversion, treatment outcome determined at 6-8 months, acute kidney injury (AKI) and drug-induced liver injury (DILI)...