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Genetic Variant may Protect Against TB and Leprosy
The findings, published today in the journal Cell, may have implications for future treatments for the two conditions.
TB and leprosy, whilst seemingly very different diseases, are both caused by rod-shaped, aerobic bacteria known as mycobacteria; TB is caused by M. tuberculosis; leprosy by M. leprae. Exposure to the bacteria causes very varied outcomes amongst patients: for example, in the case of M. tuberculosis, some people will resist infection, others will carry the bacteria asymptomatically, and yet others may develop life-threatening symptoms.
Our immune system uses two broad strategies to defend us from infection: innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Innate immunity is the immune response that we are born with; it is the first line of defence, swift, but more generalised than adaptive immunity. The latter strategy enables the immune system to adapt its response to infection in order to better target itself towards specific invading pathogens.
To investigate how mycobacteria cause disease – and what protects some people but not others – researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, together with researchers from the Wellcome Trust's South East Asia programme in Vietnam, studied zebrafish. As with mammals, the zebrafish relies on adaptive immunity – the immune response which 'learns' from invading pathogens – for maximal control of mycobacterial infection. The zebrafish's transparent larvae allow researchers to see how its innate immune response behaves before the adaptive immunity has chance to learn to recognise a pathogen.
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More News on: Leprosy, AIDS/HIV, Genetics and Stem Cells, Silicosis, Screening Tests for Tuberculosis
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