Autoantibody against interferon-γ has recently been associated with a variety of opportunistic infections, particularly among Asians. We report the case of a 64-year-old Japanese woman who suffered from concomitant or sequential infections of the skin, lungs, bronchi, uterus, and bladder with nontuberculous mycobacteriosis, cerebellar toxoplasmosis, measles,herpes zoster, and vulvar herpes. Blo...

A 32-year-old immunocompetent man developed fever and malaise that persisted for three years. As he had no health insurance, he never received any medical treatment. On admission, chest X-ray revealed multiple cavitary lesions and his sputnum yielded acid-fast bacilli, that were identified as Mycobacterium kansasii with multidrug resistance. Although his general status improved transiently by a...

Most first-line anti-tuberculosis drugs have less in vitro activity against atypical mycobacteria. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) was used for the rapid diagnosis of mycobacterial species. The sensitivity of LAMP was 96.1% (49/51) in smear-positive and culture-positive sputum samples and 85.0% (17/20) in smear-negative and culture-positive samples. Of the 77 total LAMP-positive s...

The diagnostic test characteristics of detecting free and complex-dissociated IgG to three recombinant antigens of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (38-kDa, Ag16 and Ag85B), singly and in combination, were evaluated in sera from 161 tuberculous patients [smear-positive pulmonary TB (50), smear-negative pulmonary TB (pTBsm-) (60) and extrapulmonary TB (51)) and 214 control patients (mycobacteriosis (1...