Vaccination Against Tuberculosis: Past Problems and Future Hopes

Current management of tuberculosis

“…BCG vaccination has been available since 1921 but its efficacy in protecting against primary infection is very variable, ranging from 0 -80% in studies in different areas of the world; this may reflect variations in prior exposure to environmental mycobacteria locally. Novel vaccines are under development [49].…”

The ‘Global Emergency’ of Tuberculosis

“…51 This has acted as an incentive to challenge the dogma of the need for bacterial viability in vaccines and much research is being conducted into the development of non-viable whole cell or subunit vaccines. 52,53 One promising approach is to vaccinate with 'naked' DNA, i.e. mycobacterial core DNA without any of the cell-wall and other antigenic components of the organism.…”

Effective vaccination against tuberculosis—a new ray of hope

“…Despite many attempts to develop new immunizing agents [ 3, 4], bacille Calmette–Guérin (BCG), a living attenuated derivative of a bovine tubercle bacillus ( Mycobacterium bovis ), is the only available vaccine against TB. The choice of this species rather than M. tuberculosis itself for the development of a vaccine strain was influenced by Robert Koch's dubious assertion that bovine tubercle bacilli are of low virulence in humans and by the equally dubious Marfan's Law which stated that children who recovered from non‐pulmonary manifestations of TB of bovine origin were protected against the more severe pulmonary TB in adult life [ 5].…”