BACKGROUND Despite certain drawbacks, the tuberculin skin test (TST) remains in widespread use. Important advantages of the TST are its low cost, simplicity and interpretation based on extensive published literature. However, TST specificity is reduced by bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination and exposure to non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). METHODS To estimate TST specificity, we revie...

Individuals infected with mycobacteria are likely to experience episodes of concurrent infections with unrelated respiratory pathogens, including the seasonal or pandemic circulating influenza A virus strains. We analyzed the impact of influenza A virus and mycobacterial respiratory coinfection on the development of CD8 T cell responses to each pathogen. Coinfected mice exhibited reduced freque...

There are at least two approaches to antileprosy vaccines : One is the use of Mycobacterium leprae derived from M. leprae-infected armadillos (1) and the other is the use of mycobacteria other than M. leprae, which share the antigenic determinants with M. leprae such as M. nonchromogenicum (2), M. vaccae (2), M. simiae (3), M. tuberculosis H37Ra (3), and M, bovis BCG (3). Shepard et al. (3) rep...

In the last 10 yrs, work with experimental laboratory models has developed many new vaccine candidates against tuberculosis (TB). They include subunit vaccines, modified bacilli Calmette-Guérin (BCG) and attenuated Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Phase I clinical trials of new TB vaccine candidates have begun for the first time after 80 yrs of use of BCG. Many of these new trials involve recombinan...

Vaccination of all newborns with bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is a standard practice in developing countries. Disseminated mycobacterial infection in an immunocompromised child can be caused by BCG and other mycobacteria. A total of 21 patients with a histopathologic diagnosis of mycobacterial infection were studied in a period of 4 years. DNA was extracted from formalin-fixed, paraffi...

INTRODUCTION Diagnosis of specific molecular defects of Mendelian susceptibility to mycobacterial diseases (MSMD) patients is important with respect to their clinical outcomes and their response to therapy. The aim of this study was to perform functional tests on blood samples of a group of patients who were suspected of having MSMD. METHODS This study was performed on 11 cases who had mycoba...

resolved. The dorsum of his right foot had only small, red macules, and erythema in the pretibial region had resolved. BCG vaccine has been used for decades for the prevention of tuberculosis. More recently, BCG has been used as immunotherapy for various tumors. Importantly, the dosing of BCG is much higher when given as cancer immunotherapy [5]. As a result, BCG immunotherapy is often complica...

BACKGROUND Treatment of recent tuberculosis infection in children aged <2 years is essential, because of high risk of progression to disease, but diagnosis is hindered by the inaccuracy of the tuberculin skin test (TST). More-accurate T cell-based tests of infection could enhance diagnosis by optimizing interpretation of the TST results. METHODS A total of 979 child tuberculosis contacts in I...

There are many strategies to control leishmaniasis, but majority of them are inadequate. Killed Leishmania vaccine (KLV) has been applied for its immunogenicity in human and mouse model. Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) as adjuvant is an immune-modulator inducing humoral and cellular immune responses during zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL). Both KLV and BCG have been applied for their immun...

The role of macrophage-inducible C-type lectin Mincle in lung innate immunity against mycobacterial infection is incompletely defined. In this study, we show that wild-type (WT) mice responded with a delayed Mincle induction on resident alveolar macrophages and newly immigrating exudate macrophages to infection with Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), peaking by days 14-21 postt...