Tuberculosis kills more people than any other infectious disease, and the causative bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics used to treat the infection.

Tuberculosis (TB) tricks the immune system into attacking the body's lung tissue so the bacteria are allowed to spread to other people.

The concept, published in Trends in Immunology, proposes that current ideas about how tuberculosis develops in patients may be incomplete and that, in fact, infection causes autoimmunity, where the immune system reacts incorrectly to its own tissue.

The research team conducted a review of published studies and found evidence suggesting that an autoimmunity process develops in TB.

"There is also a group of patients who develop a range of symptoms, such as eye inflammation, joint inflammation and skin rashes that are not explained by current TB disease concepts. These symptoms are usually associated with diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease, which led us to believe autoimmunity plays a key role in the TB disease process" said the senior author.

The team is now undertaking a program of work to investigate this new concept. Their approach is to combine the study of cells isolated from TB-infected patients with micro-engineering in 3D in the laboratory to investigate how TB damages the lungs.

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/09/tb-autoimmunity.page