Elena Charalambous
BHS014-6
Applied Microbiology
University of Bedfordshire
Introduction
Tuberculosis (TB) is a serious disease and it mostly attracts the fields of immunology, pathology, radiology, respiratory physiology, and neonatology (Lawn and Zumla 2011). Tuberculosis is a very old disease it first affected the mammoths and Egyptian mummies and after that it infected a large amount of the mankind (Migliori et al., 2010). More specifically, TB is a bacterial infection derived by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is spread when exposed to aerosolize droplets and causes inflammation by invading the tissue (Migliori et al., 2011). TB most commonly affects the respiratory system, mainly the lungs but it is also possible to spread to other systems such as musculoskeletal, lymphatic, cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, or genitourinary (Migliori et al., 2011). TB infection may remain latent and not cause any symptoms, or become active. The occurrence of TB can be increased due to epidemic diseases such as AIDS, that makes patients more vulnerable to TB infection, this is mostly seen in sub-Sahara Africa (Migliori et al., 2011). Despite the seriousness of the Tuberculosis disease it is possible to make a full recovery from some types of TB with the appropriate treatment. From the last 10 years a massive increase in developing new potential tuberculosis vaccines has been seen. Most information about new vaccines and how they can reduce disease progression has been provided from some animal models, such as the mouse and guinea pig, those two models have also given the information on the pathology of the disease (Orme et al., 2005). However, not many things are given about the immunological level, specifically the nature of the T-cell response, which is necessary to confer long-lived resistance (Orme et al., 2005)
Robert Koch a German scientist was the developer of Mycobacterium
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