Nanomedicine progress in prevention, detection, and treatment of tuberculosis

Abstract

Abstract Tuberculosis (TB) is the second leading cause of infection-related death worldwide. Due to its high incidence, particularities of the infection (i.e., ability to grow and multiply inside macrophages and to induce delayed hypersensitivity reactions) and to the emergence and spread of multidrug and extended-drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains, correlated with the paucity of novel antitubercular drugs, the objectives of decreasing of incidence, prevalence and mortality rates, and to successfully detect and treat TB are threatened. Nanotechnology provides valuable perspectives for TB prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. The purpose of this minireview is to present nanomedicine’s progress in the development of novel strategies for fighting tuberculosis, which once established, could be extrapolated for fighting other severe infections, produced by facultative or obligate intracellular microorganisms, and also by viruses.