by Elsevier Representative sputum samples from: A: smear negative, but culture positive (very low bacillary load); B: smear positive grade +1; C: smear positive grade 2+. A correlation between smear positive grading of the sputum sample and the visual count of captured particles of bacilli (indicated by arrows) is seen. Credit: Adapted from Moore et al., The...
by University of Chicago Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain More than 10 million people are sickened by tuberculosis (TB) globally each year, resulting in 1.5 million deaths. Yet, as many as two billion people are infected with Mycobaterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, and are otherwise healthy and asymptomatic. Scientists who study TB look at those...
by Anne Manning, Colorado State University Graphical abstract. Credit: Cell Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111783 Tuberculosis is an infectious disease of the lungs that’s been with humanity for centuries and affects a quarter of the world’s population. The stubborn disease killed over a million and a half people in 2021, mostly in lower- and middle- income countries where access...
by University of Copenhagen Reduced vitamin D-induced cathelicidin expression and M. tuberculosis elimination in macrophages from the HVDRR patient (A) mRNA and (B) protein levels of cathelicidin in macrophages from control subjects (VDRWT) and the HVDRR patient (VDRR80W). The macrophages were treated with 1,25(OH)2D3 and M. tuberculosis as indicated below the graphs. The cathelicidin levels were...
by Karolinska Institutet T cell activation and differentation. Credit: Karolinska Institutet In a new publication in Nature Communications, Martin Rottenberg and Ruining Liu, professor and Ph.D. student at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, explain how T cell protection against tuberculosis is controlled by their oxygen responses. Ten million individuals fell ill and 1.5...
by Yale School of Public Health Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB. Credit: NIAID Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be one of the top ten leading causes of death worldwide, with more than 1.3 million reported deaths in 2020. The emergence and spread of drug-resistant forms of the disease have complicated the control of TB...
by Rockefeller University Scanning electron micrograph of Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which cause TB. Credit: NIAID Tuberculosis is a stubborn disease, born of yet more stubborn microbes. While many bacterial infections resolve within days of starting antibiotics, tuberculosis often refuses to budge for around six months, and in some cases, may never release its vice grip on the...
by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Digitally colorized microscopic image of rod-shaped Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Credit: CDC NIAID One in five multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) cases in children under the age of 15 could be averted every year by household contact management, according to a new modeling study published in The Lancet Global Health....
by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Credit: CC0 Public Domain A potential game-changer in the tuberculosis epidemic was how the tuberculosis community viewed rapid molecular tests for tuberculosis and tuberculosis drug resistance. This was 12 years ago, with the launch of Xpert MTB/RIF, which gives results in less than two hours, simultaneously diagnosing tuberculosis and...
Leslie Roberts A bombed hospital in Volnovakha in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on 12 March.Credit: Anadolu Agency via Getty Adding to the brutal, immediate effects of Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian people are facing an onslaught of infectious diseases. Some threats — such as the spread of COVID-19 — are immediate, as people huddle in basements, subway stations...
