Biozentrum, University of Basel , Basel , Switzerland.
Front Immunol. 2014 Oct 8;5:455. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2014.00455. eCollection 2014.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis continues to be one of the most successful pathogens on earth. Upon inhalation of M. tuberculosis by a healthy individual, the host immune system will attempt to eliminate these pathogens using a combination of immune defense strategies. These include the recruitment of macrophages and other phagocytes to the site of infection, production of cytokines that enhance the microbicidal capacity of the macrophages, as well as the activation of distinct subsets of leukocytes that work in concert to fight the infection. However, being as successful as it is, M. tuberculosis has evolved numerous strategies to subvert host immunity at virtual every level. As a consequence, one third of the world inhabitants carry M. tuberculosis, and tuberculosis continuous to cause disease in more than 8 million people with deadly consequences in well over 1 million patients each year. In this review, we discuss several of the strategies that M. tuberculosis employs to circumvent host immunity, as well as describe some of the mechanisms that the host uses to counter such subversive strategies. As for many other infectious diseases, the ultimate outcome is usually defined by the relative strength of the virulence strategies employed by the tubercle bacillus versus the arsenal of immune defense mechanisms of the infected host.
结核分枝杆菌仍然是地球上最成功的病原体之一。健康个体吸入结核分枝杆菌后，宿主免疫系统将通过一系列免疫防御策略来试图清除这些病原体。这些策略包括招募巨噬细胞和其他吞噬细胞到感染部位，产生细胞因子来增强巨噬细胞的杀菌能力，以及激活不同的白细胞亚群，这些白细胞协同工作以抵抗感染。然而，结核分枝杆菌非常成功，它已经进化出了无数种策略来颠覆宿主的免疫。因此，世界上有三分之一的人携带结核分枝杆菌，结核病仍然导致 800 多万人患病，每年有超过 100 万人因此死亡。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了结核分枝杆菌用来规避宿主免疫的几种策略，并描述了宿主用来对抗这种颠覆策略的一些机制。和许多其他传染病一样，最终结果通常由结核分枝杆菌所采用的毒力策略与受感染宿主的免疫防御机制的储备之间的相对强度来决定。
