Primary tuberculous mycobacterial granulomas provide a niche for superinfecting Mycobacterium abscessus

Denise Wee, Manitosh Pandey, Yao Chen, Paolo A. Lorenzini, Eve WL Chow, Yue Wang, Amit Singhal and Stefan H. Oehlers ()
Additional contact information
Denise Wee: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science
Manitosh Pandey: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science
Yao Chen: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science
Paolo A. Lorenzini: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science
Eve WL Chow: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science
Yue Wang: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science
Amit Singhal: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science
Stefan H. Oehlers: Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR ID Labs), Agency for Science

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Prior and concurrent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection are among the most important susceptibility factors for nontuberculous mycobacterial infection in Asia. Here we model this process in zebrafish with a primary Mycobacterium marinum infection followed by a secondary M. abscessus infection. We demonstrate preferential growth of secondary M. abscessus infection inside primary M. marinum granulomas. Granuloma-resident secondary M. abscessus is protected from macrophage-mediated immune control and antibiotic therapy. We find other opportunistic pathogens Mycobacterium smegmatis, Aspergillus fumigatus, and Candida auris are also able to colonize and preferentially grow inside primary M. marinum granulomas. Rapid growth of M. abscessus is driven by feeding on caseum produced by the primary M. marinum ESX-1 virulence program in a nutritionally separate niche from M. marinum. In this work we show tuberculous granulomas may provide a long-lasting niche for the growth of the opportunistic pathogen M. abscessus.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65797-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-65797-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-65797-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().