Tuberculosis is a global health threat and the unique features of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and emergence of drug-resistant strains highlight the challenge it presents. Covering a wealth of state-of-the-art knowledge from active international experts, this book captures the latest developments in the advent of bacteriological, immunological and molecular tools for diagnosis and the development of new drugs. It shows how the challenge of tuberculosis is currently being met, providing insight into the evidence base underlying new developments in diagnosis, drug development and treatment.

Part 1 - Diagnosis

1. Improving upon Sputum Smear Microscopy for Diagnosis of Tuberculosis in Resource-poor Settings
2. Molecular Diagnosis of Active Pulmonary Tuberculosis
3. Improving on the LJ Slope - Automated Liquid Culture
4. Interferon Gamma Release Assays in the Diagnosis of Latent Tuberculosis Infection
5. Measuring TB Immune Responses in the Lung - The Correct Target?
6. Sniffing out TB


Part 2 - Measuring Resistance
7. Role of Phenotypic Methods for Drug Susceptibility Testing of M. tuberculosis Isolates in the Era of MDR and XDR Epidemics
8. Genotypic Measures of Antibiotic Susceptibility
9. Molecular Tools for Fast Identification of Resistance and Characterization of MDR/XDR-TB

Part 3 - Understanding Treatment

10. Monitoring Therapy by Bacterial Load
11. Modelling Responses to Tuberculosis Treatment
12. Measuring Gene Expression by Quantitative PCR (qPCR)
13. Transcriptomic Approaches to Mapping Responses to Drug Therapy for Tuberculosis
14. Mycobacterial Lipid Bodies and Resuscitation-promoting Factor Dependency as Potential Biomarkers of Response to Chemotherapy

Part 4 - Treatment strategies

15. Clinical Trials in Tuberculosis Chemotherapy - The Challenges
16. The Identification of 2-aminothiazole-4-carboxylates (ATCs) as a New Class of TB Agent - A Lesson in "HIT" Identification
17. Rifamycins Revisited
18. Therapy of the XDR-TB Patients with Thioridazine - an Old Drug with New Applications
19. Vaccines for Tuberculosis