Tuberculosis vaccination: the long road to a better BCG

摘要

The Holy Grail of a human tuberculosis (TB) vaccine offering significantly greater and more predictable protection than BCG continues to be elusive, despite the massive incentives to find it. Human infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a global experience, with estimates that a third of the world's population is infected, resulting in upwards of eight million active cases and more than two million deaths each year (Ginsberg, 2002). Given these figures one may forget that M. boris, the infective agent of bovine tuberculosis, also results in human infection and additionally is a major cause of economic loss to farming industries world-wide through production losses and damage to international trade.