Data are the mean ± SEM of at least three independent experiments, unless differently

specified. The Student’s t-test Dabrafenib cell line was used to determine result significance (p ≤ 0.05). This work was supported by grants from the: Associazione Italiana Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC, “Code: IG – 10565 Funding source: 5 PER MILLE MIUR 2008 to L.V.; AIRC, Code: IG-9366” to M.G.); the European Network for Cancer Research in Children and Adolescents (ENCCA) to L.V.; Associazione Italiana Glicogenosi (AIG) to L.V.; Progetti di ricerca di Ateneo Università di Torino-Compagnia San Paolo, Special Project Microstructure and Nanostructure to M.G.; Regione Piemonte Progetti strategici Piattaforma innovativa Biotecnologie per le Scienze della Vita: Project IMMONC to F.N. F.R. was supported by a fellowships Ku-0059436 in vivo from AIRC. PBMCs and DCs were derived from the peripheral blood of healthy donors from the blood bank under an Institutional Review Board-approved protocol. The authors declare no financial or commercial conflict of interest. As a service to our authors and readers, this journal provides supporting

information supplied by the authors. Such materials are peer reviewed and may be re-organized for online delivery, but are not copy-edited or typeset. Technical support issues arising from supporting information (other than missing files) should be addressed to the authors. “
“During the last two decades, the resurgence of tuberculosis (TB) has been documented in both developed and developing nations, and much of this increase in TB burden coincided with Smoothened human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemics. Since then, the disease pattern has changed with a higher incidence of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) as well as disseminated TB. EPTB cases include TB lymphadenitis, pleural TB, TB meningitis, osteoarticular TB, genitourinary TB, abdominal TB, cutaneous TB, ocular TB, TB pericarditis and breast TB, although any organ can be involved. Diagnosis of EPTB can be baffling, compelling a high index of suspicion owing to paucibacillary load in the biological specimens.

A negative smear for acid-fast bacilli, lack of granulomas on histopathology and failure to culture Mycobacterium tuberculosis do not exclude the diagnosis of EPTB. Novel diagnostic modalities such as nucleic acid amplification (NAA) can be useful in varied forms of EPTB. This review is primarily focused on the diagnosis of several clinical forms of EPTB by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using different gene targets. Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the leading infectious diseases throughout the world accounting for about 8.8 million incident cases in 2010 (Griffiths et al., 2010; WHO, 2011). India alone accounted for 2.0–2.5 million cases in 2010, thus contributing approximately 26% of all TB cases worldwide (WHO, 2011). According to National Tuberculosis Control Programmes (NTPs), 2.6 million new cases of sputum smear-positive pulmonary TB (PTB), 2.