Publications by authors named "Ruth McNerney"

Article Synopsis
  • The Beijing genotype of tuberculosis (TB) is linked to multidrug resistance (MDR) and is spreading, with recent evidence showing its emergence in Portugal and Guinea-Bissau, despite these countries not being traditional hotspots for this strain.
  • A genome analysis identified two specific genomic clusters of Beijing strains in these countries, one in Portugal associated with supercluster 100-32 and another in Guinea-Bissau linked to supercluster 94-32.
  • The study highlights the interconnectedness of TB cases across borders, demonstrating a potential cross-border cluster involving Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, and Brazil, and points to a worrying trend of increasing drug resistance in TB strains globally.
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Tuberculosis disease, caused by , is a major public health problem. The emergence of strains resistant to existing treatments threatens to derail control efforts. Resistance is mainly conferred by mutations in genes coding for drug targets or converting enzymes, but our knowledge of these mutations is incomplete.

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Background: Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs is a major threat to global public health. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is rapidly gaining traction as a diagnostic tool for clinical tuberculosis settings. To support this informatically, previous work led to the development of the widely used TBProfiler webtool, which predicts resistance to 14 drugs from WGS data.

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There is poor understanding about protective immunity and the pathogenesis of cavitation in patients with tuberculosis. To map pathophysiological pathways at anatomically distinct positions within the human tuberculosis cavity. Biopsies were obtained from eight predetermined locations within lung cavities of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis undergoing therapeutic surgical resection ( = 14) and healthy lung tissue from control subjects without tuberculosis ( = 10).

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Drug-resistant tuberculosis poses a persistent public health threat. The ReSeqTB platform is a collaborative, curated knowledgebase, designed to standardize and aggregate global Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) variant data from whole genome sequencing (WGS) with phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) and clinical data. We developed a unified analysis variant pipeline (UVP) ( https://github.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on detecting mixed infections of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in populations using whole genome sequencing (WGS) data.
  • Two methods were assessed: one based on heterozygous site analysis and another using Bayesian model-based clustering of allele frequencies.
  • Results showed that about 10% of the population had mixed infections, which were linked to the year of diagnosis but not to other patient characteristics like age or sex.
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The threat of resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs is of global concern. Current efforts to monitor resistance rely on phenotypic testing where cultured bacteria are exposed to critical concentrations of the drugs. Capacity for such testing is low in TB endemic countries.

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In the version of this article initially published, the URL listed for TubercuList was incorrect. The correct URL is https://mycobrowser.epfl.

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Tuberculosis remains the leading cause of death from an infectious disease worldwide. Early and accurate diagnosis and detection of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis is essential for achieving global tuberculosis control. Despite the introduction of the Xpert MTB/RIF assay as the first-line rapid tuberculosis diagnostic test, the gap between global estimates of incidence and new case notifications is 4·1 million people.

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Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major health problem within the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP). Despite the marked variation in TB incidence across its member-states and continued human migratory flux between countries, a considerable gap in the knowledge on the Mycobacterium tuberculosis population structure and strain circulation between the countries still exists. To address this, we have assembled and analysed the largest CPLP M.

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To characterize the genetic determinants of resistance to antituberculosis drugs, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 6,465 Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates from more than 30 countries. A GWAS approach within a mixed-regression framework was followed by a phylogenetics-based test for independent mutations. In addition to mutations in established and recently described resistance-associated genes, novel mutations were discovered for resistance to cycloserine, ethionamide and para-aminosalicylic acid.

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DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification of the genome involved in regulating crucial cellular processes, including transcription and chromosome stability. Advances in PacBio sequencing technologies can be used to robustly reveal methylation sites. The methylome of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex is poorly understood but may be involved in virulence, hypoxic survival and the emergence of drug resistance.

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A clear understanding of the genetic basis of antibiotic resistance in is required to accelerate the development of rapid drug susceptibility testing methods based on genetic sequence.Raw genotype-phenotype correlation data were extracted as part of a comprehensive systematic review to develop a standardised analytical approach for interpreting resistance associated mutations for rifampicin, isoniazid, ofloxacin/levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, amikacin, kanamycin, capreomycin, streptomycin, ethionamide/prothionamide and pyrazinamide. Mutation frequencies in resistant and susceptible isolates were calculated, together with novel statistical measures to classify mutations as high, moderate, minimal or indeterminate confidence for predicting resistance.

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It is challenging to understand mechanisms of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) due to the large variability in resistance associated genes. Efflux pump genes contribute to drug resistance and thus add to this complexity. Efflux pump gene protein superfamilies have been characterized by genome analysis of drug resistant strains and through in vitro transcriptional studies.

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Article Synopsis
  • Tuberculosis (TB) is a significant global health issue, with drug resistance, especially to Pyrazinamide (PZA), complicating treatment efforts.
  • Researchers analyzed 68 M. tuberculosis strains from TB patients in Peru, identifying no clear genetic clustering but discovering mutations in the pncA gene and other novel genes linked to PZA resistance.
  • These findings indicate that PZA resistance may involve multiple mechanisms, suggesting that the drug targets several biological pathways instead of just one.
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Global tuberculosis incidence has declined marginally over the past decade, and tuberculosis remains out of control in several parts of the world including Africa and Asia. Although tuberculosis control has been effective in some regions of the world, these gains are threatened by the increasing burden of multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis. XDR tuberculosis has evolved in several tuberculosis-endemic countries to drug-incurable or programmatically incurable tuberculosis (totally drug-resistant tuberculosis).

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Background: The emergence of programmatically incurable tuberculosis threatens to destabilise control efforts. The aim of this study was to collect prospective patient-level data to inform treatment and containment strategies.

Methods: In a prospective cohort study, 273 South African patients with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or resistance beyond extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, were followed up over a period of 6 years.

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Background: Inadequate case detection results in high levels of undiagnosed tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa. Data for the effect of new diagnostic tools when used for community-based intensified case finding are not available, so we investigated whether the use of sputum Xpert-MTB/RIF and the Determine TB LAM urine test in two African communities could be effective.

Methods: In a pragmatic, randomised, parallel-group trial with individual randomisation stratified by country, we compared sputum Xpert-MTB/RIF, and if HIV-infected, the Determine TB LAM urine test (novel diagnostic group), with laboratory-based sputum smear microscopy (routine diagnostic group) for intensified case finding in communities with high tuberculosis and HIV prevalence in Cape Town, South Africa, and Harare, Zimbabwe.

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Introduction: Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has emerged as one of the biggest threats to public health and TB control programs worldwide. XDR-TB is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) strains resistant to rifampin and isoniazid, as well as to a fluoroquinolone and to at least one injectable aminoglycoside. Drug resistance in MTB has primarily been associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in particular genes.

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Background: The emergence of resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs is a serious and growing threat to public health. Next-generation sequencing is rapidly gaining traction as a diagnostic tool for investigating drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis to aid treatment decisions. However, there are few little data regarding the precision of such sequencing for assigning resistance profiles.

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Whole genome sequencing (WGS) can provide a comprehensive analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis mutations that cause resistance to anti-tuberculosis drugs. With the deployment of bench-top sequencers and rapid analytical software, WGS is poised to become a useful tool to guide treatment. However, direct sequencing from clinical specimens to provide a full drug resistance profile remains a serious challenge.

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Two geographically distant M. tuberculosis sublineages, Tur from Turkey and T3-Osaka from Japan, exhibit partially identical genotypic signatures (identical 12-loci MIRU-VNTR profiles, distinct spoligotyping patterns). We investigated T3-Osaka and Tur sublineages characteristics and potential genetic relatedness, first using MIRU-VNTR locus analysis on 21 and 25 samples of each sublineage respectively, and second comparing Whole Genome Sequences of 8 new samples to public data from 45 samples uncovering human tuberculosis diversity.

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Mycobacterium aurum (M. aurum) is an environmental mycobacteria that has previously been used in studies of anti-mycobacterial drugs due to its fast growth rate and low pathogenicity. The M.

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