Mycobacteriosis is a common disease of laboratory zebrafish Danio rerio. Different infection patterns occur in zebrafish depending on mycobacterial species. Mycobacterium marinum and M. haemophilum produce virulent infections associated with high mortality, whereas M. chelonae is more widespread and is not associated with high mortality. Identification of mycobacterial infections to the species...

To determine the factors that predispose the patient with lung cancer to develop terminal pulmonary infections, we reviewed the case records and autopsy data of 304 patients who died of lung cancer in the Kyushu University Hospital between 1976 and 1990. The incidence of mycobacterial infection was significantly higher among those treated with antineoplastic therapy and corticosteroids (group 3...

A mycobacterial aetiology for Crohn's disease (CD) has been suggested. Slow growing mycobacteria indistinguishable from M paratuberculosis, the causative agent of enteritis in ruminants (Johne's disease) have been isolated from CD tissues. We have used cloned genomic DNA probes derived from a CD isolated mycobacteria strain Ben, to investigate the presence of mycobacterial DNA sequences in CD t...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the major pathogen of tuberculosis (TB). With the growing problem of M. tuberculosis resistant to conventional antibiotics, especially multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively-drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), the need for new TB drugs is now more prominent than ever. Among the promising candidates for anti-TB drugs, anti-mycobacterial peptide...

BACKGROUND Although tuberculosis is transmitted by the airborne route, direct information on the natural output of bacilli into air by source cases is very limited. We sought to address this through sampling of expelled aerosols in face masks that were subsequently analyzed for mycobacterial contamination. METHODS In series 1, 17 smear microscopy positive patients wore standard surgical face ...

An array of homogeneous glycans representing all the major carbohydrate structures present in the cell wall of the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other mycobacteria has been probed with a panel of glycan-binding receptors expressed on cells of the mammalian innate immune system. The results provide an overview of interactions between mycobacterial glycans and receptors that media...

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and hemagglutination methods were compared using mycobacterial glycolipids as antigens. Both methods were found to have equivalent specificity and sensitivity in detecting mycobacterial diseases. Both tests had 96% specificity; the sensitivity of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was 86%, and that of the hemagglutination test was 88.6%.

Requests for direct molecular diagnosis of mycobacterial disease are increasingly warranted. The Anyplex MTB/NTM assay demonstrates sensitivities, specificities, and positive and negative predictive values of 1.00, 0.96, 0.93, and 1.00 for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) and 1.00, 0.97, 0.75, and 1.00 for nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) detection, respectively, making it a suitable ...

Background The Mendelian Susceptibility to Mycobacterial Diseases (MSMD) is a rare congenital syndrome that confers a predisposition to recurrent infections by mycobacteria. All genetic defects that lead to MSMD produce changes at IL-12/23-IFN-g axis. We aimed to evaluate the IL-12/ 23-IFN-g axis in adult patients with recurrent mycobacterial infections in order to identify possible MSMD patients.

Escherichia coli has served as the archetypal organism on which the overwhelming majority of biochemical characterizations of bacterial RNA polymerase (RNAP) have been focused; the properties of E. coli RNAP have been accepted as generally representative for all bacterial RNAPs. Here, we directly compare the initiation properties of a mycobacterial transcription system with E. coli RNAP on two ...