Scientists identify mutations in DNA for early diagnosis of drug resistant bacteria for TB

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Last Updated09/05/2023

A group of scientists led by CSIR-Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB) director has, in a new study, established that mutations in DNA repair genes could be used for the early diagnosis of MDR/XDR-TB.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a treatable disease, but drug resistance is now a major public health concern exacerbated by the emergence of multi and extensively drug-resistant TB.
India has the highest burden of Multi-Drug Resistant-TB (MDR-TB) bacteria with the World Health Organisation (WHO) putting the figure at 0.39 million cases worldwide and highlighting the need to stop its spread.
Long treatment, higher drug toxicity, and costly drug treatment make the MDR and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB challenging to treat

The study identified a ‘compromised DNA repair’ as one of the novel mechanisms for the evolution of drug resistance in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (Mtb) which causes Tuberculosis (TB) in humans.
MDR-TB bacteria are resistant to first-line anti-TB drugs and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) when it becomes resistant to first-line TB drugs.
Since the evolution of drug resistance in India has not been studied, scientists started analysing the genome sequence of bacteria isolated from TB patients from other parts of the world to understand the unknown mechanisms and bridge the gap between early diagnosis and treatment of MDR-TB.
With the help of whole genome sequencing of bacteria, it was successfully shown that perturbed DNA repair aids in the acquisition of drug resistance in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (Mtb)