HONG KONG (Reuters) - People who carry a mutant gene can develop potentially fatal meningitis if they get infected with the drug resistant Beijing strain of tuberculosis, a study in Vietnam has found. Tuberculous meningitis is the most severe form of the disease in which the infection spreads to membranes enveloping the brain and the spinal cord. One in three people who develop TB meningitis dies, even if he or she gets hospital treatment. The study published in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens (http://www.plospathogens.org/doi/ppat.1000034), found people most likely to develop TB meningitis were those who carried a variant of the TLR2 gene and who get infected with the Beijing TB strain, prevalent in Asia and the former Soviet states.
