occur after injection. Disseminated mycobacterial disease was common in US and European AIDS patients in the 1980s and early 1990s, though the incidence has declined in developed nations since the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy. It can also occur in individuals after having renal transplantation. Diagnosis Diagnosis of opportunistic mycobacteria is made by repeated isolation and identification of the pathogen with compatible clinical and radiological features. Similar to M. tuberculosis, most nontuberculous mycobacteria can be detected microscopically and grow on Löwenstein-Jensen medium. Many reference centres now use a nucleic acid-based method such as sequence differences detection in the gene coding for 16S ribosomal RNA to identify the species. Pulmonary NTM disease diagnosis requires both identification of the mycobacterium in the patient's lung(s), as well as a high-resolution CT scan of the lungs. Research French researchers finalized the genome sequence of M. abscessus in March 2008. The genome is available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=genome&cmd=search&term=abscessus. References Further reading New BTS Guideline has been published in 2017, https://www.brit-thoracic.org.uk/standards-of-care/guidelines/bts-guidelines-for-non-tuberculous-mycobacteria/ Grange, J. M. (2007). "Environmental mycobacteria". In Greenwood, David; Slack, Richard; Peitherer, John; & Barer, Mike (Eds.), Medical Microbiology (17th ed.), pp. 221–227. Elsevier. . Deppisch C et al. (2016). Gaseous nitric oxide to treat antibiotic resistant bacterial and fungal lung infections in patients with cystic fibrosis: a phase I clinical study. Infection. 44(4):513-20. pmid= 26861246. Meng-Rui Lee et al., (2015). Mycobacterium abscessus Complex Infections in Humans. Emerg Infect Dis.; 21(9): 1638–1646. . External links NTM Info & Research, a nonprofit research and patient support organization Lung, Nontuberculous Mycobacterial Infections from eMedicine Radiology Bacteriology Bacterial diseases