Permutations of time and place in tuberculosis

Tuberculosis remains a global health pandemic. The current depiction of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis life cycle proposes that airborne bacilli are inhaled and phagocytosed by alveolar macrophages, resulting in the formation of a granuloma that ruptures into the airways to reinitiate the infectious cycle. However, this widely proposed model overlooks the fact, established 100 years ago, that the initial site of M tuberculosis implantation is in the lower zones of the lungs, whereas infectious cavitary pulmonary disease develops at the lung apices. The immunological events at these two pulmonary locations are different--cavitation only occurs in the apices and not in the bases. Yet the current conceptual model of tuberculosis renders the immunology of these two temporally and spatially separated events identical. One key consequence is that prevention of primary childhood tuberculosis at the lung bases is regarded as adequate immunological protection, but extensive evidence shows that greater immunity could predispose to immunopathology and transmission at the lung apex. A much greater understanding of time and place in the immunopathological mechanisms underlying human tuberculosis is needed before further pre-exposure vaccination trials can be done.