In 2015, 10.4 million people contracted tuberculosis, and 1.8 million died, worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Nearly half a million of the new cases were multidrug-resistant. 95 percent of the deaths occur in middle- and low-income countries. TB is a leading killer of people with HIV. The only existing vaccine was first used in 1921, and has a variety of shortcomings, including that it can cause the disease in immunocompromised people.
A clever new tuberculosis vaccine has shown promise in trials in mice. If it succeeds, it will be the first new TB vaccine in a century. With the rise of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, the difficulty of curing the disease, and the large annual death toll, a successful vaccine could be a huge benefit to public health -- especially in low- and middle income countries. The research is published in Applied and…
