Photo: NIAID

medicalxpress.com

When Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, infects a person, the body's immune response is critical to how the disease will progress—either helping the body fight the bacterium or exacerbating the infection

University of Maryland researchers discovered a way that Mtb can cause a person's immune cells to lower their defenses. Specifically, they identified a gene in the bacterium that suppresses immune defenses in infected human cells, which could exacerbate the infection.

This new finding may point to an effective target for a gene-based treatment or preventative therapy for tuberculosis, which ...