Clustering Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific CD154CD4 T cells for distinguishing tuberculosis disease from infection based on single-cell RNA-seq analysis.

Background: Distinguishing between active tuberculosis disease (TBD) and latent tuberculosis infection (TBI) is crucial for TB control but remains challenging.

Methods: Single-cell RNA sequencing was conducted on purified Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB)-specific CD154CD4 T cells.

Results: We observe a superior role of CD154 in detecting MTB infection, whereas its ability in distinguishing TBD from TBI is still limited due to patient heterogeneity.