What is it about?
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease that kills 1.5 million people every year worldwide. To treat it, a standard treatment of antibiotics is applied for several months. However, such treatment is not successful in a proportion of patients, partly because it does not consider individual variability in humans and bacteria. To change the approach from standardized to individualized one, clinical indicators – biomarkers and biosignatures – are needed. Systems biology, a complex approach that integrates data from various biological, chemical, medical fields, has the potential to provide necessary novel biomarkers. These biomarkers may help in predicting the risks of developing tuberculosis, improving rapid and precise diagnosis of disease, and finding an optimal treatment regimen according to individual variability and individual response to treatment. They also may help to predict the risks of treatment failure or disease re-occurrence.
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This page is a summary of: Perspectives for systems biology in the management of tuberculosis, European Respiratory Review, May 2021, European Respiratory Society (ERS),
DOI: 10.1183/16000617.0377-2020.
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