Bacterial Diseases Programme, MRC Laboratories, POB 273, Banjul, the Gambia.
BMC Infect Dis. 2010 Jan 19;10:11. doi: 10.1186/1471-2334-10-11.
Currently available tools cannot be used to distinguish between sub-species of the M. tuberculosis complex causing latent tuberculosis (TB) infection. M. africanum causes up to half of TB in West- Africa and its relatively lower progression to disease suggests the presence of a large reservoir of latent infection relative to M. tuberculosis.
We assessed the immunogenicity of the TbD1 region, present in M. africanum and absent from "modern" M. tuberculosis, in an ELISPOT assay using cells from confirmed M. africanum or M. tuberculosis infected TB patients without HIV infection in the Gambia.
Antigens from the TbD1 region induced IFNgamma responses in only 35% patients and did not discriminate between patients infected with M. africanum vs. M. tuberculosis, while PPD induced universally high responses.
Further studies will need to assess other antigens unique to M. africanum that may induce discriminatory immune responses.
目前可用的工具无法区分导致潜伏性结核感染的结核分枝杆菌复合群的亚种。在西非，非洲分枝杆菌可引起高达半数的结核病，而其向疾病的相对较低进展表明，与结核分枝杆菌相比，潜伏性感染的储库更大。
我们使用冈比亚未感染 HIV 的确诊感染非洲分枝杆菌或结核分枝杆菌的结核患者的细胞，在 ELISPOT 检测中评估了 TbD1 区域的免疫原性，该区域存在于非洲分枝杆菌中而不存在于“现代”结核分枝杆菌中。
来自 TbD1 区域的抗原仅诱导了 35%患者的 IFNγ 反应，并且不能区分感染非洲分枝杆菌与结核分枝杆菌的患者，而 PPD 则诱导了普遍较高的反应。
需要进一步研究评估可能诱导出有区别的免疫反应的其他独特的非洲分枝杆菌抗原。
