RESEARCH ARTICLE Association of the miR-146 m n

is available at the end of the articleBackground Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a chronic disease that can present serious threats to human health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) global TB report, an esti-mated 8.56 million of people developed active form of TB in 2012 and 1.26 million died from the disease (in-cluding 320 000 deaths among HIV-positive people). Therefore, TB is still a leading cause of death in humans [1]. During the same year, an estimated 1.37 million cases of TB occurred in China, accounting for 18 % of all TB infections worldwide. About 130 000 people die each year from TB in China, which has the world’s second largest TB epidemic, only behind India [1]. The Uygur and Kazak populations in the Xinjiang Uygur Autono-mous Region of northwest China are seriously affected by TB. The prevalence rate of active, sputum smear-positive, and sputum culture-positive pulmonary TB in these populations have been found to be 464/10000, 160/10000, and 38/10000, respectively, and were 1.26, 1.51 and 3.88 times higher than the national average, re