Tuberculosis Research and Epidemiology

Tuberculosis is caused by *Mycobacterium tuberculosis*, a bacterium that has coexisted with humans for millennia and still kills more than a million people each year, making it one of the leading infectious causes of death worldwide. Researchers study how the pathogen establishes infection, evades immune defenses, and develops resistance to the antibiotics that form the backbone of treatment — a problem that has grown more urgent as strains resistant to multiple drugs have spread across several continents. A central challenge is improving diagnostic tools sensitive enough to detect infection early and in low-resource settings, where the disease burden is heaviest. On the prevention side, the century-old BCG vaccine offers only partial protection, so developing a more effective replacement — and understanding exactly what kind of immune response would stop the bacterium — remains one of the field's most active and consequential open questions.

Works

243,056

Total citations

2,663,248

Keywords

TuberculosisMycobacterium tuberculosisDrug ResistanceImmune ResponseDiagnosisVaccine