Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP) is the known infectious cause of Johne's disease, an enteric inflammatory disease mostly studied in ruminant animals. MAP has also been implicated in the very similar Crohn's disease of humans as well as sarcoidosis. Recently, MAP has been associated with juvenile sarcoidosis (Blau syndrome), autoimmune diabetes, autoimmune thyroiditis, and ...

SETTING Over 150 potentially pathogenic non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) species have been described, posing an onerous challenge for clinical laboratory diagnosis. OBJECTIVE To evaluate different approaches for the identification of 40 clinically relevant NTM isolates whose species were not reliably identified using our routine diagnostic workflow comprising phenotypic tests and hsp65 poly...

BACKGROUND/AIM The purpose of the present study was to determine the distribution and epidemiological features of mycobacteria with molecular methods. MATERIALS AND METHODS Fifty-five culture-positive samples were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction enzyme length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) at species level, and their molecular typing was performed with spoligotyping. The IS6110 reg...

Pulmonary diseases caused by nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) are increasing in incidence and prevalence worldwide. In this study, we identified NTM species of the clinical isolates from 8 provinces in China, in order to preliminarily provide some basic scientific data in the different species and distribution of NTM related to pulmonary disease in China. A total of 523 clinical isolates from ...

BACKGROUND The incidence of Mycobacterium marinum infection has been increasing. First-line antituberculous drugs and other common antibiotics are effective for most cutaneous M. marinum infections; however, treatment failure still occurs in some rare cases. We report a case of a 70-year-old man with refractory cutaneous infection caused by M. marinum. Reasons for delayed diagnosis and related ...

Recent multi locus sequence typing (MLST) and genome based studies indicate that lateral gene transfer (LGT) events in the rpoB gene are prevalent between Mycobacterium abscessus complex strains. To check the prevalence of the M. massiliense strains subject to rpoB LGT (Rec-mas), we applied rpoB typing (711 bp) to 106 Korean strains of M. massiliense infection that had already been identified b...

INTRODUCTION Many studies have shown epidemiological links between strains isolated in tap water, and those isolated from patients. Molecular methods linked to PCR are more reliable and faster for identification of non- tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). In this study molecular methods were used for identification and typing of NTM. MATERIALS AND METHODS Five hundred ml of 85 water samples was p...

PURPOSE Diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) poses serious challenges. A careful selection of appropriate gene targets is essential for designing a multiplex-polymerase chain reaction (M-PCR) assay. MATERIALS AND METHODS We compared several gene targets of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, including IS6110, devR, and genes encoding MPB-64 (mpb64), 38kDa (pstS1), 65kDa (hsp65), 30kDa (fbp...

The great challenges for researchers working in the field of vaccinology are optimizing DNA vaccines for use in humans or large animals and creating effective single-dose vaccines using appropriated controlled delivery systems. Plasmid DNA encoding the heat-shock protein 65 (hsp65) (DNAhsp65) has been shown to induce protective and therapeutic immune responses in a murine model of tuberculosis ...