New options in Tuberculosis Care: Visions for the future are crucial for controlling the disease

Publication date: Available online 12 November 2016 Source:International Journal of Mycobacteriology Author(s): Malin Ridell New scientific approaches are necessary The current strategies for controlling tuberculosis (TB) are not sufficient. Improved prophylactic and diagnostic tools are imperative, being crucial for decreasing TB incidence and mortality and for preventing outbreaks. Furthermore, new and better drugs are badly needed, particularly considering the increase in cases with multidrug-resistant strains. The current TB vaccine—the Bacillus Calmette–Guérin vaccine—has a preventive impact on disseminated TB in children, but little effect on the most common form of TB, that is, lung TB in adults and young adults. For many years extensive scientific efforts have been made in order to develop new vaccines against TB that are better and more effective than Bacillus Calmette–Guérin. No such vaccine exists, however, to date. During the last few years it has become increasingly clear that TB patients can be infected with more than one strain and that a previous TB infection increases rather than decreases the risk for getting a new one. Mycobacterium tuberculosis organisms are thus not capable of inducing protective immunity to such an extent that a new TB infection is prevented. This phenomenon highlights the problems of developing effective vaccines against TB. A new TB vaccine based on general immunological protection models would in all probability only have...
Source: International Journal of Mycobacteriology - Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: research