The role of antigens shared between Mycobacteria in in-vivo cross-reactive immune responses in host animals, have been reported to be responsible for reduced BCG vaccination efficacy as well reduced specificity of routine immunological diagnostic tests. This presents with significant disease control challenges in humans and animals. The present review highlights the results of previous studies ...

Novel environmental air and water mycobacteria sampling and analytical methods are needed to circumvent difficulties associated with the use of culture-based methodologies. To implement this objective, a commercial, clinical, genus DNA amplification method utilizing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was interfaced with novel air sampling strategies in the laboratory. Two types of air samplers...

It is difficult to distinguish between clinically significant slowly-growing, non-pigmented mycobacteria, notably to separate M. aviumand M. intracellulare from one another and from M. scrofulaceum strains. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which 16S rRNA sequencing could be used to highlight the taxonomic relationships of the mycobacterial strains, which are difficult to ...

Background: Diabetes is an important metabolic disease with myriad manifestations and complications, affecting many people. Cutaneous infections impact numerous diabetic patients. Among different bacterial infections in diabetic patients, the infections caused by mycobacteria other than Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MOTT) eventuate in complications owing to the paucity of accurate detection...

The frequency of recovery of atypical mycobacteria was estimated in two treatment plants providing drinking water to Paris, France, at some intermediate stages of treatment. The two plants use two different filtration processes, rapid and slow sand filtration. Our results suggest that slow sand filtration is more efficient for removing mycobacteria than rapid sand filtration. In addition, our r...

A new, simple immunochromatographic assay for rapid identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex in liquid cultures has been developed. The principle of the assay is binding of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex specific antigen to the monoclonal antibody conjugated on the test strip. The aim of this study is evaluation of the performance of immunochromatographic assay in identifica...

Pathogenic mycobacteria parasitize macrophages and reside within phagosomes, which do not fuse with lysosomal granules. Mycobacteria are also internalized by neutrophils, which possess at least two types of granules, specific and azurophil granules, the latter being specialized lysosomes. Here, we investigated the ability of mycobacteria to inhibit the fusion of these granules with their phagos...

Guidelines have been produced for tuberculosis by the British Thoracic Society (BTS), 2 the American Thoracic Society (ATS), the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and the World Health Organisation. These, however, deal mainly with Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex infections (M tuberculosis, M africanum, and M bovis). With the exception of the ATS guidelines on non-tub...

T helper cell 1 (Th1)-dependent delayed hypersensitivity reactions are an important part of host defenses against intracellular infections. Yet, more than two centuries after Jenner's successful inoculation against smallpox, we still do not know exactly how to produce safe vaccines that stimulate Th1 immunity. Specialized bone marrow–derived an-tigen-presenting cells normally are required to in...