A Sensitive and Quantitative Assay to Enumerate and Measure Mycobacterium leprae Viability in Clinical and Experimental Specimens.

ABSTRACT: Mycobacterium leprae, the etiologic agent of leprosy, cannot be cultured on artificial media. This characteristic, coupled with its long generation time, presents a number of unique challenges to studying this pathogen. One of the difficulties facing both researchers and clinicians is the absence of a rapid test to measure the viability of M. leprae in clinical or experimental specimens. The lack of such a tool limits the understanding of M. leprae immunopathogenesis and makes determining the efficacy of drug treatments difficult. With this in mind, we developed a robust two-step molecular viability assay (MVA) that first enumerates the M. leprae in the tissue; then, this data is used to normalize bacterial RNA quantities for the second step, in which the expression of M. leprae esxA and h

SUBMITTER: Collins JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8936146 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature