Drug resistant tuberculosis: molecular mechanisms and diagnostic methods

Drug resistant tuberculosis: Molecular mechanisms and diagnostic methods. Despite the fact that Tuberculosis (TB) has been found in humans since the Neolithic Age, it still remains serious public health problem, increased in the last few years due to the phenomenon of drug resistance (DR). The World Health Organization (WHO) established that the diagnosis of tuberculosis drug resistance (DR) is essential for its control, and at the same time considers that the traditional diagnostic procedures have reached their limit. In view of this critical scenario, the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that explain the phenomenon of the TB-DR, in combination with novel techniques in molecular biology, are allowing a new generation of diagnostic procedures to be developed for TB-DR. However, this work sets out to answer the questions of what these molecular mechanisms TB-DR areas well as their characteristics, advantages and limitations of these new diagnostic methodologies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.