The genetics of susceptibility to tuberculosis: Progress and challenges

Tuberculosis is a global pressing healthcare issue in the modern world. Host genetics is an important modifier of the disease risk. Genetic and genomic studies aim to reveal key inherited variants of the human genome associated with the susceptibility to tuberculosis. Much attention is given to the study of differential genetic susceptibility to various stages of tuberculous infection, particularly latent tuberculosis, the detection of which is most challenging. Susceptibility genes have been identified and most of which exhibit a relatively small effect on the disease risk. On the other hand, a proportion of children suffer from Mendelian susceptibility to tuberculosis associated with rare mutations with deterministic effect in genes for the components of cellular immunity against intra-cellular infections. This review focuses on the current achievements in genomic studies devoted to the identification of genes important for the implementation of the immune response and protection against the development of the infection in different populations in the world.