Harald Hoffmans News Today

Designing effective multidrug-resistant-TB treatments based on DNA sequencing Globally, tuberculosis is the most common bacterial infectious disease leading to death. The pathogen causing tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has a number of peculiarities. One is that it is growing very slowly. While other typical pathogens, such as pneumococcal and pseudomonads, can already be identified by their growth in the microbiological laboratory in the first 72 hours, several weeks usually pass bef...

The successful treatment of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis requires clarification in advance as to which antibiotics the pathogens are resistant to. Classic testing is very time-consuming and delays the start of therapy. Researchers from the Research Center Borstel and the DZIF have now prepared a catalogue of all mutations in the genome of tuberculosis bacteria and on the basis of a genome sequencing can quickly and cheaply predict which medicines are most effective for tuberculosis treatment...