A 36-year-old man with underlying chronic lymphocytic leukemia had left arm swelling for a duration of 3 months. Clinically, the affected arm was swollen, erythematous and tender. Epicoccum nigrum was isolated from the culture of the tissue that was obtained intraoperatively. He was treated and responded to voriconazole therapy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of intramuscular abscess as a result of E. nigrum infection in an immunocompromised patient.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in diseases development. Therefore, human miRNAs may be able to inhibit the survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) in the human host by targeting critical genes of the pathogen. Mutations within miRNAs can alter their target selection, thereby preventing them from inhibiting Mtb genes, thus increasing host susceptibility to the disease.
The acquired immune response against tuberculosis is commonly associated with T-cell responses with little known about the role of B cells or antibodies. There have been suggestions that B cells and humoral immunity can modulate the immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, the mechanisms involving B-cell responses in M. tuberculosis are not fully understood, in particular the antibody gene preferences. We hypothesized that a preferential use of V genes can be seen associated with resistance to infection mainly in the IgA isotype, which is of prominent importance for infection by pathogens via the mucosal route. We studied healthy individuals with long-term exposure to tuberculosis, infected (TST(+) ) and uninfected TST(-) ) with M. tuberculosis. From a total of 22 V genes analysed, the TST(-) population preferred the VH 3-23 and Vκ1 genes. The VH 3-23 genes were subsequently subjected to 454 amplicon sequencing. The TST(-) population showed a higher frequency of the D3-10 segment compared with the D3-22 segment for the TST(+) population. The J segment usage pattern was similar for both populations with J4 segment being used the most. A preferential pairing of J4 segments to D3-3 was seen for the TST(-) population. The antibodyome difference between both populations suggests a preference for antibodies with VH 3-23, D3-3, JH 4 gene usage by the TST(-) population that could be associated with resistance to infection with M. tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis (TB) still constitutes a major public health problem in Malaysia. The identification and genotyping based characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) isolates causing the disease is important to determine the effectiveness of the control and surveillance programs.