New Diagnostic Techniques for Mycobacterial Infections and Their Outcomes

Dear Colleagues,

As you are aware, tuberculosis continues to cause significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. At the same time, nontuberculous mycobacterial infections have been increasing, particularly in developed countries, suggesting that the need to develop novel detection techniques is warranted. While culture remains the gold standard for diagnosing tuberculosis, the development of new and reliable diagnostic tools for early detection of mycobacterial infection and disease in susceptible hosts is needed to prevent the development and transmission of disease. Recent advances in technology have expanded to include non-classical avenues such as non-sputum-based cost-effective point-of-care tests and biomarker investigations using proteomics and metabolomics.

For this Special Issue of Pathogens, we invite you to submit research articles, review articles, and short notes related to new mycobacterial diagnostics. We look forward to your contribution.

Suggested topics:

• Advanced techniques to detect mycobacteria or their components in sputum and body fluids;
• Host-derived or bacteria-derived biomarkers to detect mycobacterial infections, and prediction of the prognosis of the disease;
• New potential biomarkers to determine protective efficacy of tuberculosis vaccine and predictive biomarkers for progression to active tuberculosis;
• Immunosensing, proteomics, mass spectrometry, etc., for detection of mycobacterial infections;
• Characterization of mycobacterial strains isolated from humans and animals;
• Outcomes of newly introduced mycobacterial diagnostic techniques under human and veterinary clinical settings.

Prof. Dr. Hwa-Jung Kim
Dr. Isdore Chola Shamputa
Dr. Kapil Tahlan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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