ISSN: 1755-5191

Imaging in Medicine

Atypical Mycobacterium

 Mycobacterial diseases are caused by members of the genus Mycobacterium , acid-fast bacteria characterized by the presence of mycolic acids within their cell walls. Claiming almost 2 million lives per annum, tuberculosis (TB) is that the commonest mycobacterial disease and is caused by infection with M. tuberculosis and, in rare cases, by M. bovis or M. africanum. The second and third commonest mycobacterial diseases are leprosy and buruli ulcer (BU), respectively. Both diseases affect the skin and may cause permanent sequelae and deformities. Leprosy is caused by the uncultivable M. leprae while the etiological agent of BU is that the environmental bacterium M. ulcerans. After exposure to those mycobacterial species, a majority of people won't reach clinical disease and, among those that do, inter-individual variability in disease manifestation and outcome are often observed. Susceptibility to mycobacterial diseases carries an individual's genetic component and intense efforts are applied over the past decades to decipher the precise nature of the genetic factors controlling disease susceptibility. While for BU this search was mostly conducted on the thought of candidate genes association studies, genome-wide approaches are widely applied for TB and leprosy. In this review, we summarize variety of the findings achieved by genome-wide linkage, association and transcriptome analyses in TB disease and leprosy and thus the recent genetic findings for BU susceptibility.  

High Impact List of Articles

Relevant Topics in General Science