Exploring and exploiting the host cell autophagy during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection

• Published in: European journal of clinical microbiology & infectious diseases Vol. 42; no. 11; pp. 1297 - 1315
• Main Authors: Nagdev, Pavan Kumar, Agnivesh, Puja Kumari, Roy, Arnab, Sau, Shashikanta, Kalia, Nitin Pal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-11-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Autophagy; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Drug resistance; Drugs; Infections; Infectious diseases; Internal Medicine; Medical Microbiology; Multidrug resistance; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Pathogens; Review; Side effects; Tuberculosis; Tuberculosis; Host defense; Host cell inhibitors; Autophagy
• ISSN: 0934-9723; 1435-4373
• DOI: 10.1007/s10096-023-04663-0

Tuberculosis, caused by
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
, is a fatal infectious disease that prevails to be the second leading cause of death from a single infectious agent despite the availability of multiple drugs for treatment. The current treatment regimen involves the combination of several drugs for 6 months that remain ineffective in completely eradicating the infection because of several drawbacks, such as the long duration of treatment and the side effects of drugs causing non-adherence of patients to the treatment regimen. Autophagy is an intracellular degradative process that eliminates pathogens at the early stages of infection.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis’s
unique autophagy-blocking capability makes it challenging to eliminate compared to usual pathogens. The present review discusses recent advances in autophagy-inhibiting factors and mechanisms that could be exploited to identify autophagy-inducing chemotherapeutics that could be used as adjunctive therapy with the existing first-line anti-TB agent to shorten the duration of therapy and enhance cure rates from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB).