This is an open access article under the terms of the Creat ive Commo ns Attri butio n-NonCo mmerc ial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

We report a 29-year-old man with a rare left lumbar subcutaneous cold abscess complicated by tuberculous spondylitis during the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. Pulmonary tuberculosis was rapidly improved by anti-tuberculous drugs, however curative operation for tuberculous spondylitis was necessary after 18 months because tuberculous spondylitis was overlooked. Imaging techniques are important in helping to establish a diagnosis of tuberculous spondylitis. It should be stressed that a high clinical index of suspicion for tuberculosis is needed to correctly diagnose this disease.

Simple and rapid methods for the detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are required to analyze the genetic information. We have previously isolated DNA aptamers that bind to cholic acid by an in vitro selection method. A common feature of the sequences of the aptamers was that they included a secondary structure, a three-way junction, in which three stems were connected at the junction. It was also revealed that three-way junctions with fully matched three stems bind cholic acid whereas single-base substitutions at the junction lose binding affinity completely. Here we report a new method for the detection of single nucleotide mutations that is based on the formation of fully matched three-way junctions which bind to cholic acid.