When Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, infects a person, the body’s immune response is critical to how the disease will progress—either helping the body fight the bacterium or exacerbating the infection.
University of Maryland researchers discovered a way that Mtb can cause a person’s immune cells to lower their defenses. Specifically, they identified a gene in the bacterium that suppresses immune defenses in infected human cells, which could exacerbate the infection.
This new finding may point to an effective target for a gene-based treatment or preventative therapy for tuberculosis, which sickens about 10 million people and kills 1-2 million people annually according to the World Health Organization. Available treatments are only 85% effective and multidrug-resistant forms of tuberculosis pose a public health threat in many parts of the world. The study was published on July 29, 2021, in the journal PLOS Pathogens.
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PLOS Pathogens. Research Paper:
