Mycobacteria are endowed with mechanisms through which they can evade the onslaught ofhost defense response. These mechanisms are discussed including diminishing the ability ofantigen presenting cells to present antigens to CD4+ T cells; production of suppressive cytokines;escape from fused phagosomes and inducing T cell review brings out the complexity of the host-pathogen interaction and underlines theimportance of identifying the mechanisms involved in protection, in order to design vaccinestrategies and find out surrogate markers to be measured as in vitro correlate of protectiveimmunity
