Potential of High-Affinity, Slow Off-Rate Modified Aptamer Reagents for Mycobacterium tuberculosis Proteins as Tools for Infection Models and Diagnostic Applications

摘要

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major global health problem, and in 2015 it had the highest mortality of any infectious disease worldwide. While there has been a steady yet slow decline in new TB cases at a rate of 2% per year recently, incidence remains high in Africa, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, the Western Pacific Region, and in Central and South America, totaling 10.4 million new TB cases in the world in 2015 (1). TB mortality rate has decreased by almost half since 1990, but there are still over a million deaths per year, with about one-fourth of these deaths occurring among people with HIV.