Could we be getting close to a TB vaccine? Recent trials ended in disappointment, but teams across the world race for another solution. — Click to Tweet.
The search for a complete TB vaccine has ended in another setback.
Recently a series of infant trials were completed to test a replacement for Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). These trials were the first to be done in infants since 1921, when BCG was introduced.
The problem with BCG is that it’s only partially effective against the TB bacterium. This latest vaccine — called MVA85A — carried the prospect of complete effectiveness, but unfortunately it’s been found that it fails to protect babies who already have had the other vaccine.
The Disappointing Trial
In South Africa researchers conducted a trial on 2,794 babies aged four to six months. Half of these children received MVA85A and half received a placebo.
After following these groups for two years, it was found that 32 in the vaccine group contracted TB, whereas 39 in the placebo group did. While this difference may seem like a plausible sign of effectiveness, it’s actually not statistically significant in such a large group.
Strangely, this same vaccine has been shown to stimulate a high level of immune response in adults, on whom it’s been tested for over a decade now. Though the infant trials were disappointing, researchers stress that the results were not a terminal prognosis for the vaccine, or any other TB vaccines in development.
There’s still a lot to be learned from the data this study collected, stressed Professor Helen McShane from the University of Oxford.
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