M. tuberculosis persistence, latency, and drug tolerance

JE Gomez, JD McKinney - Tuberculosis, 2004 - Elsevier
The success of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as a pathogen is largely attributable to its ability
to persist in host tissues, where drugs that are rapidly bactericidal in vitro require prolonged
administration to achieve comparable effects. Latency is a frequent outcome of untreated or
incompletely treated M. tuberculosis infection, creating a long-standing reservoir of future
disease and contagion. Although the interactions between the bacterium and its host that
result in chronic or latent infection are still largely undefined, recent years have seen a …