Conventional and Molecular Diagnosis of Drug-Sensitive and Drug-Resistant Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is a transmissible disease, which is primarily caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis and by other Mycobacterium species, forming the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Until the end of the 20th Century, most cases of pulmonary tuberculosis were considered curable. Nevertheless, the rising of tuberculosis resistant to first- and second-line anti-tuberculous drugs is threatening the world’s tuberculosis control programs. Due to this fact, the World Health Organization and other public health institutions recommended applying the conventional methods, affordable by low-incoming countries, to diagnose tuberculosis and to develop faster and more sensitive and specific methods to identify M. tuberculosis and determine their condition of anti-tuberculous drug resistance or drug sensitivity. In this chapter, we mention the most used conventional and molecular methods designed to identify M. tuberculosis and to determine their drug sensitivity or drug resistance. We also briefly describe the fundamentals of methods and its advantages and limitations

Elucidating the neuropathologic mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 infection

Acknowledgements We want to express our gratitude to the Union Medical University Clinic, Dominican Republic, for their support and collaboration in the development of this research project. We also want to express our gratitude to the Mexican families who have donated the brain of their loved ones affected with Alzheimer's disease and made our research possible. This work is dedicated to the memory of Professor Dr. José Raúl Mena López†.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Correlations between major risk factors and closely related Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates grouped by three current enotyping procedures: a population-based study in northeast Mexico

The characteristics of tuberculosis (TB) patients related to a chain of recent TB transmissions were investigated. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) isolates (120) were genotyped using the restriction fragment length polymorphism-IS6110 (R), spacer oligotyping (S) and mycobacterial interspersed repetitive units-variable number of tandem repeats (M) methods. The MTB isolates were clustered and the clusters were grouped according to the similarities of their genotypes. Spearman&#8217;s rank correlation coefficients between the groups of MTB isolates with similar genotypes and those patient characteristics indicating a risk for a pulmonary TB (PTB) chain transmission were ana- lysed. The isolates showing similar genotypes were distributed as follows: SMR (5%), SM (12.5%), SR (1.67%), MR (0%), S (46.67%), M (5%) and R (0%). The remaining 35 cases were orphans. SMR exhibited a significant correlation (p < 0.05) with visits to clinics, municipalities and comorbidities (primarily diabetes mellitus). S correlated with drug consumption and M with comorbidities. SMR is needed to identify a social network in metropolitan areas for PTB transmission and S and M are able to detect risk factors as secondary components of a transmission chain of TB