Proteomic analysis of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from patients with active TB and at the end of treatment

Tuberculosis (TB) is a chronic granulomatous disease caused by the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The success of M. tuberculosis can be attributed to its ability to evade protective host immune responses and its recalcitrance to antimicrobial chemotherapy. Detailed understanding of protective host immune response to TB is still lacking and there are limited reports that characterize host responses to TB at the site of disease. Furthermore, although cure of the majority of patients treated with the standard 6-month multidrug regimen indicates that treatment is highly effective, approximately 4-10% of clinically cured patients will develop recurrent disease within the first 12 months after completing therapy. We therefore analyzed BALF supernatant proteomes from pulmonary TB patients and patients at the end of standard anti-TB treatment to gain a better understanding of the host response at the site of disease. This would not only aid our understanding of localised host responses during TB disease, but could allow us to identify protein signatures associated with active TB disease or clinical cure.