Publications by authors named "Georgetta Mbayo"
Article Synopsis
- Blood-based biomarkers could provide a more effective way to monitor treatment response in active tuberculosis compared to traditional sputum-based methods.
- In a study with twenty adults, immune responses were measured before and after two months of standard TB treatment, revealing key differences in T cell activation between fast and slow responders.
- Findings suggest that while treatment may reduce T cell activation markers, the initial levels of these markers could help predict how quickly a patient responds to treatment.
Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent worldwide. The immune system is capable of clearing the pathogen before establishment of latent infection but the mechanisms for this are not yet understood.
Methods: This study analysed highly exposed household contacts (HHC) of TB index cases who were categorised according to QuantiFERON (QFT) results at recruitment and 6 months.
Pathogens that evade adaptive immunity typically exhibit antigenic variation. By contrast, it appears that although the chronic human tuberculosis (TB)-causing pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis needs to counter host T cell responses, its T cell epitopes are hyperconserved. Here we present an extensive analysis of the T cell epitopes of M.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome includes the large family of pe_pgrs genes, whose functions are unknown. Because of precedents in other pathogens in which gene families showing high sequence variation are involved in antigenic variation, a similar role has been proposed for the pe_pgrs genes. However, the impact of immune selection on pe_pgrs genes has not been examined.
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