November 05, 2019
According to the World Health Organization, last year 10 million people become ill with tuberculosis (TB). Many more carry an inactive form of the bacteria, and drug resistant TB is becoming both more difficult and more expensive to diagnose and treat. Researchers have been working for decades to create an effective vaccine, and at last we may be one step closer.
The current BCG vaccine is not very effective against this highly contagious disease, so a team of international researchers have been working to create a new one. This new vaccine is still a few years away from being licensed for widespread use, but initial trials in humans have been successful. The new vaccine has been created from TB proteins that cause an immune response and has been shown to be effective even in patients already infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which causes TB.
This new vaccine was announced last week at a global summit on lung health held in India, the country with the highest level of TB cases. It is hoped that the new vaccine will available by 2028, which would go a long way to helping reduce the number of patients who die from TB every year worldwide.
Source: BBC
Read more: http://ow.ly/V39j50wZLwS
