This bacteria belongs to the Mycobacteria family and leprae genus. It’s an intracellular pathogen that causes leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, receiving its name from G.A Hansen, who is credited for the discovery of M. leprae in 1873. Before learning more about this pathogen, let me walk you through some general information about Mycobacteria. Mycobacteria is a rod-shaped bacilli and aflagellate, moving from one place to another through mucus in our body. It’s an obligate aerobe and mesophilic, meaning it’s mostly around the area with most oxygen and best temperature. Also, it’s an obligate parasite, in fact some mycobacteria could only survive with the presence of a host cell, and it do not form spore. What special about this type of bacteria is that they are strongly acid fast bacteria, they are not gram negative and not
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Because of its special form of the cell wall as being an acid fast bacterium, all the initial dyes are retained instead of washed away. Therefore, we didn’t use ordinary methods for staining but instead we used carbol fuchsin, a mixture of phenol and fuchsin, to stain our bacteria. There are many different type of mycobacteria in this world that shared some similarities with M. leprae but one of the most well known and the most similar to M. leprae is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. M. tuberculosis is the most clinically relevant Mycobacterium species and about 90% of the infections are in the lung because it is an obligate aerobes. A M. tuberculosis bacterium is 2-4 micrometers in length and 0.2-0.5 micrometers in width. It causes tuberculosis (TB) infection and about ⅓ of the population have it. Just like most of the mycobacteria, M. tuberculosis also have latent stage and active stage. Latent infection (LTBI) is the stage when the build up of granuloma is present in lung but does not show
Because of its special form of the cell wall as being an acid fast bacterium, all the initial dyes are retained instead of washed away. Therefore, we didn’t use ordinary methods for staining but instead we used carbol fuchsin, a mixture of phenol and fuchsin, to stain our bacteria. There are many different type of mycobacteria in this world that shared some similarities with M. leprae but one of the most well known and the most similar to M. leprae is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. M. tuberculosis is the most clinically relevant Mycobacterium species and about 90% of the infections are in the lung because it is an obligate aerobes. A M. tuberculosis bacterium is 2-4 micrometers in length and 0.2-0.5 micrometers in width. It causes tuberculosis (TB) infection and about ⅓ of the population have it. Just like most of the mycobacteria, M. tuberculosis also have latent stage and active stage. Latent infection (LTBI) is the stage when the build up of granuloma is present in lung but does not show