Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Resitance Mechanisms to Bactericidal Activity of Phagocytes: A Review

The human immune is extremely complex. It has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to respond to invasion by the pathogenic microbes that regularly attempt to infect our bodies, and invasion by the microbes that tried to infect our genetic ancestors. Phagocytes are the soldiers of the immune system, and provide innate immunity. They are responsible for swallowing, killing and digesting invading microbes by phagocytosis. Despite the presence of antimicrobial host factors (from immune system), many pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis can survive inside the host cell due to evolvement of multitude of strategies to counteract host defense mechanisms. The paper review the strategies adopted by Mycobacterium tuberculosis to evade bactericidal activity of innate immune phagocytes.

Keywords: Bactericidal activity, innate immunity, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, phagocytes.