BACKGROUND The persistence of Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae) infection is largely dependent on the types of host immune responses being induced. Macrophage, a crucial modulator of innate and adaptive immune responses, could be directly infected by M. leprae. We therefore postulated that M. leprae-infected macrophages might have altered immune functions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here, ...

Mycobacterium leprae, an obligate intracellular pathogen, invades and multiplies within host mononuclear phagocytes. To understand M. leprae invasion better, we have investigated the role of phagocyte receptors and bacterium-bound ligands in phagocytosis of M. leprae by human monocytes. Complement receptors CR1 and CR3 mediate adherence and phagocytosis of M. leprae in nonimmune serum. Two MAbs...

About 2% of the genome of Mycobacterium leprae is composed of repetitive DNA. There are more than 26 extinct IS elements together with four families of dispersed repeats, present in five copies or more, RLEP (37 copies), REPLEP (15 copies), LEPREP (eight copies), and LEPRPT (five copies). Although there is no sequence similarity to known transposable elements, RLEP occurs predominantly at the 3...

Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, is noncultivable in vitro; therefore, evaluation of antibiotic activity against M. leprae relies mainly upon the mouse footpad system, which requires at least 12 months before the results become available. We have developed an in vitro assay for studying the activities of quinolones against the DNA gyrase of M. leprae. We overexpressed in Es...

Leprosy is caused by infection with Mycobacterium leprae. The immune response of leprosy patients can be highly diverse, ranging from strong cellular responses accompanied by an apparent deficit of M. leprae-specific antibodies to strong humoral responses with a deficit of cell-mediated responses. Leprosy takes many years to manifest, and this has precluded analyses of disease and immune respon...

Infectious diseases are influenced by where patients have lived or travelled in the past, e.g., infection with Schistosoma mekongi can be acquired during freshwater contact in Cambodia, but not in the United States. Here the infectious diseases of Khmer immigrants in the United States were studied by reviewing published reports. Thirteen case series and 9 case reports of 5,222 patients were ide...

Subcultures of strain HI-75 of Skinsnes leprosy bacillus received in Antwerp and London have been studied bacteriologically and compared. Both contained moderately large acid-fast bacilli readily subcultured and maintained on ordinary mycobacteriologic media. These organisms were found to be a variety of Mycobacterium marianum (syn. serofulaceum) and were considered likely to be a laboratory co...

Mycobacterium leprae, the etiological agent of leprosy, is noncultivable on axenic media. Therefore, the viability of M. leprae for clinical or experimental applications is often unknown. To provide new tools for M. leprae viability determination, two quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) assays were developed and characterized. M. leprae sodA mRNA and 16S rRNA were used as RNA target...