Editorial

Copyright © 2015 Vishwanath Venketaraman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), the causative agent for tuberculosis (TB), is responsible for 1.5 million deaths and 9 million new cases of TB in 2013 [1]. Lack of highly specific and sensitive diagnostic tests, restricted vaccine efficacy, emergence of multidrug and extensively drug-resistant strains ofM. tuberculosis, andHIV coinfection are the most important factors that result in poor global TB control [1]. It is estimated that, among individuals who are infected with M. tuberculosis, around 85–90 % are able to control the infection but are unable to completely eradicate the bacillus from their bodies resulting in a latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) [2]. LTBI is defined by th