Contents Preface v Guest Editors vi Introduction viii 1. Microbiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and a new diagnostic 1 test for TB Vera Katalinić-Janković, Lucinda Furci and Daniela Maria Cirillo 2. Epidemiology of TB 14 Lia D’Ambrosio, Antonio Spanevello and Rosella Centis 3. Pulmonary diseases caused by non-tuberculous mycobacteria 25 Jakko van Ingen, David E. Griffi th, Timothy R. Aksamit and Dirk Wagner 4. Human genetic variability and susceptibility to pulmonary TB 38 Th orsten Th ye and Christian G. Meyer 5. State of the art in vaccine development against TB 59 Tom H.M. Ottenhoff and Stefan H.E. Kaufmann 6. Prevention of TB in areas of low incidence 72 Roland Diel and Albert Nienhaus 7. Prevention of TB in areas of high incidence 84 Ben J. Marais, H. Simon Schaaf and Dick Menzies 8. TB drug resistance in high-incidence countries 95 Keertan Dheda, Grant Th eron, Jonathan G. Peter, Greg Symons, Rodney Dawson and Paul Willcox 9. TB drug resistance in low-incidence countries 111 Kai Kliiman, Gunar Günther and Alan Altraja 10. Diagnosis of TB: state of the art 124 Jonathan G. Peter, Richard N. van Zyl-Smit, Claudia M. Denkinger and Madhukar Pai 11. Omics and single molecule detection: the future of TB diagnostics 144 Graham H. Bothamley, Morten Ruhwald and Delia Goletti Number 58 December 2012