Tuberculosis Research and Epidemiology

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection caused by *Mycobacterium tuberculosis* that kills more than a million people each year, making it one of the deadliest infectious diseases despite being both preventable and treatable. Researchers study how the bacterium evades the human immune system, spreads through populations, and increasingly resists the antibiotics that have historically controlled it. A central challenge is developing diagnostics sensitive enough to catch infection early in low-resource settings, alongside vaccines that outperform the century-old BCG and drug regimens that can reliably clear drug-resistant strains. Understanding the molecular dialogue between pathogen and host — how *M. tuberculosis* persists inside immune cells and what tips the balance toward active disease — remains one of the field's most active and consequential open questions.

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Keywords

TuberculosisMycobacterium tuberculosisDrug ResistanceImmune ResponseDiagnosisVaccine