Infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is the leading cause of death in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)+ individuals, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Management of this deadly co-infection is a significant global health challenge that is exacerbated by the lack of efficient vaccines against both Mtb and HIV, as well as the lack of reliable and robust animal models for Mtb/HIV co...

Targeted radiotherapy with 211At-methylene blue (211At-MTB) is a systemic treatment selectively directed at melanoma due to a high affinity of MTB to melanin synthesized in the tumor cells. Since MTB forms a strong complex with melanin, it is an effective carrier for a number of radioisotopes to be addressed to the tumor deposits of any size including individually dispersed melanoma cells. Thus...

Tuberculosis (TB) has emerged as the most prominent bacterial disease found in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive individuals worldwide. Due to high prevalence of asymptomatic Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infections, the future HIV vaccine in areas highly endemic for TB will often be administrated to individuals with an ongoing Mtb infection. The impact of concurrent Mtb infection ...

BACKGROUND Lipases and phospholipases are thought to contribute to the pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection. Genes coding for lipases, phospholipases and amylase are present in MTB, enabling the bacteria to produce these enzymes. OBJECTIVE To compare serum lipase and amylase activity levels in patients with tuberculosis (TB) against those of healthy controls. METHODS S...

Our objective was to assess the cost-benefit of enhancing or replacing the conventional sputum smear with the real-time PCR Xpert MTB/RIF method in the inpatient diagnostic schema for tuberculosis (TB).Recent data from published per-case cost studies for TB/multidrug-resistant (MDR)-TB and from comparative analyses of sputum microscopy, mycobacterial culture, Xpert MTB/RIF and drug susceptibili...

Over the last two decades, a range of minimal invasive surgery (MIS) techniques have been presented to reduce patient recovery time and risks of infection during the surgery. In MIS, incisions are significantly small, as opposed to conventional surgery [1]. The operating range of the needle insertion is limited by the reachability of the needle tip within the human body due to the presence of o...

BACKGROUND Hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa are inundated with HIV-infected patients and tuberculosis (TB) is the commonest opportunistic infection in this sub-group. Up to one third of TB-HIV co-infected patients fail to produce a sputum sample (sputum scarce) and diagnosis is thus often delayed or missed. We investigated the sensitivity of urine-based methods (Xpert MTB/RIF, LAM strip test and...

BACKGROUND Accurate, rapid detection of tuberculosis (TB) and TB drug resistance is critical for improving patient care and decreasing TB transmission. Xpert® MTB/RIF assay is an automated test that can detect both TB and rifampicin resistance, generally within two hours after starting the test, with minimal hands-on technical time. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued initial recommendat...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), possesses at least three type VII secretion systems, ESX-1, -3 and -5 that are actively involved in pathogenesis and host-pathogen interaction. We recently showed that an attenuated Mtb vaccine candidate (Mtb Δppe25-pe19), which lacks the characteristic ESX-5-associated pe/ppe genes, but harbors all other components of the ESX-5 system, induces CD4+ T-cell immu...

The conventional method for quantitating Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) in vitro and in vivo relies on bacterial colony forming unit (CFU) enumeration on agar plates. Due to the slow growth rate of Mtb, it takes 3-6 weeks to observe visible colonies on agar plates. Imaging technologies that are capable of quickly quantitating both active and dormant tubercle bacilli in vitro and in vivo would...