Tuberculosis is an ancient disease that humanity struggled with for centuries and continues to struggle with. The bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis often infects the lungs through respiratory transmission and manifests itself through various symptoms, including cutaneous infections. Cutaneous tuberculosis (CTB) comprises about 1% to 1.5% of all extrapulmonary manifestations and is often accompanied by polymorphous lesions, including papules, nodules, plaques, ulcers, gummas, and verrucous lesions. CTB is most commonly observed in low-income, HIV, and immunosuppressed populations, similar to intrapulmonary manifestations. The main pathogen for CTB is M. tuberculosis but less commonly with M. bovis and BCG vaccine, and the modes of transmission are largely classified into exogenous and endogenous CTB. Current treatment options for CTB include oral therapy of antibiotic medications such as rifampicin, streptomycin, ethambutol, isoniazid, and pyrazinamide, which is occasionally combined with surgical intervention.

A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) has caused a major outbreak in humans around the globe, and it became a severe threat to human healthcare than all other infectious diseases. Researchers were urged to discover and test various approaches to control and prevent such a deadly disease. Considering the emergency and necessity, we screened reported antiviral compounds present in the traditional Indian medicinal plants for the inhibition of SARS-CoV2 main protease. In this study, we used molecular docking to screen 41 reported antiviral compounds that exist in Indian medicinal plants and shown amentoflavone from the plant Torreyanucifera with a higher docking score. Furthermore, we performed a 40 ns atomic molecular dynamics simulation and free binding energy calculations to explore the stability of the top five protein–ligand complexes. Through the article, we insist that the amentoflavone, hypericin and Torvoside H from the traditional Indian medicinal plants may be used as a potential inhibitor of SARS-CoV2 main protease and further biochemical experiments could shed light on understanding the mechanism of inhibition by these plant-derived antiviral compounds. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Globally, rising drug-resistant tuberculosis is a significant public health concern. Prompt diagnosis of tuberculosis and detection of drug-resistant TB within a clinically appropriate timeframe is important for the effective management of the disease. Imaging approaches Chest X-rays, CT, MRI, nuclear medicine technique as PET/CT are non-specific, plays an important role in the diagnosis and assessment of TB, but PET/CT sometimes results in false-positive or negative due to benign lesions.Currently using the point of care molecular modalities, Gene Xpert MTB/RIF and line probe assays focused only on resistance-conferring mutations in specific target hotspot regions, but did not identify novel mutations, outside mutations and they may miss some locally prevalent rifampicin-conferring mutations, and not provided a large number of antibiotics/antibiotic groups that are used for DRTB treatment.Recently revolutionized high throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies are offering new prospects for molecular diagnosis, for example, infectious disease pathogens like tuberculosis, influenza, and most recently SARS-CoV-2. NGS is an essential resource for the tuberculosis communityeither target, WGS, or NGS; a rapid method that offers a complete spectrum of Mycobacterium tuberculosis resistance mutations, strain typing for transmission surveillance, unlike traditional molecular or phenotypic DST. It shall be helpful for early regimen design and TB management before mutations emerge and therefore, we believe that the worldwide TB infection will be eliminated by the use of NGS.

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the major threats to public health; annually it kills more than 1.5 million people around the globe. Tuberculosis is caused by an intracellular pathogen named Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). This Mtb enters the lung through the respiratory passage by inhalation in healthy individuals. Infection of this disease starts from the settlement of Mtb to the lung alveoli of the host from the external bacilli air droplets. After settlement, the multiplication of Mtb results in the induction of innate immunity through the alveolar macrophages. Compared to other infectious diseases, tuberculosis infection was transmitted rapidly by the infected aerosols released from infected persons to healthy persons through the air. After infection, disease development results in the formation of drug-resistance TB (DR-TB) with four subcategories, i.e. Single-drug resistant TB (SDR-TB), multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB), extensive drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), and total-drug resistant TB (TDR-TB). As a result, this DR-TB may act as a major source of TB death due to spontaneous antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This AMR makes the anti-TB drugs ineffective. In the current scenario, researchers are trying to find the drug target to decrease tuberculosis progression instead of drug resistance. The present review reports that the outcome of research studies showed that matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) may act as a suitable target for treating Mtb infection with the help of specific proteinase inhibitors. Recent reports have shown the specific role of matrix metalloproteinases 1, 8, and 9 in the disease progression and its role in normal homeostasis mechanism with the help of specific animal models/In vitro models.