BACKGROUND Current treatment regimens for pulmonary tuberculosis require at least 6 months of therapy. Immune adjuvant therapy with recombinant interferon-gamma1b (rIFN-gammab) may reduce pulmonary inflammation and reduce the period of infectivity by promoting earlier sputum clearance. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We performed a randomized, controlled clinical trial of directly observed the...

Current tools for monitoring response to tuberculosis treatments have several limitations. Noninvasive biomarkers could accelerate tuberculosis drug development and clinical studies, but to date little progress has been made in developing new imaging technologies for this application. In this study, we developed pulmonary single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) using radioiodinated D...

Tuberculosis retains its foothold among human populations despite increasing implementation of highly effective control measures around the world. Highburden countries would benefit from interventions that decrease disease transmission. As the majority of new cases of tuberculosis arise from patients with cavitary pulmonary disease, strategies targeting this group of patients could significantl...

Objectives: (1) To correlate structure (CT) with function in pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), and (2) to describe the evolution of structural and functional abnormalities when pulmonary TB is treated with directly observed therapy. Subjects and methods: Twenty-five patients with drug-susceptible pulmonary TB, 15 cavitary and 10 noncavitary, were studied prospectively. Conventional CT and pulmonary ...

Mycobacterium szulgai (M. szulgai) is an unusual pathogen in a human non-tuberculous mycobacterial infection. Pulmonary infection due to M. szulgai may be clinically and radiologically confused with active pulmonary tuberculosis. In contrast to other non-tuberculous mycobacteria, M. szulgai infection is well controlled by combination antimycobacterial therapy. Most of the previously reported ca...

Clinical tuberculosis (TB), whether noncavitary or cavitary, is the late stage of a chronic disease process, since Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a slowly growing organism. Our studies have shown that the profiles of antigenic proteins expressed by the in vivo bacteria that elicit antibodies differ in cavitary and noncavitary TB. To gain insight into antigenic proteins expressed during incipient...

From Jan 1, 1981 to Oct 31, 1984, 24 of 280 (8.6 percent) patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) had tuberculosis. No patient with both AIDS and tuberculosis was Haitian. In 15 patients, tuberculosis was diagnosed prior to or concomitant with the diagnosis of AIDS. Twelve patients (50 percent) had Mycobacterium tuberculosis grown from at least one extrapulmonary site. Although ...

This short review explores the large gap between clinical issues and basic science, and suggests why tuberculosis research should focus on redirect the immune system and not only on eradicating Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacillus. Along the manuscript, several concepts involved in human tuberculosis are explored in order to understand the big picture, including infection and disease dynamics, a...

Thirty-six patients with AIDS and culture-proven nontuberculous mycobacteriosis were compared to 20 patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and tuberculosis with regard to clinical signs, symptoms, and diagnostic methods. Patients with nontuberculous mycobacteriosis were more often younger and homosexuals, while patients with tuberculosis were usually Haitian-American or users o...