Whole blood assay to access T cell-immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens in healthy Brazilian individuals.

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Abstract
The production of interferon gamma (IFNgamma) guarantees effective T cell-mediated immunity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. In the present study, we simply compare the in vitro immune responses to Mycobacterium antigens in terms of IFNg production in a total of 10 healthy Brazilian volunteers. Whole blood and mononuclear cells were cultivated in parallel with PPD, Ag85B, and M. bovis hsp65, and five-days supernatants were harvested for cytokine detection by ELISA. The inter-assay result was that the overall profile of agreement in response to antigens was highly correlated (r(2) = 0.9266; p = 0.0102). Potential analysis is in current progress to dictate the usefulness of this method to access the immune responses also in tuberculosis patients and its contacts.