Decades old tu­ber­cu­lo­sis vac­cine di­rect­ly in­ject­ed in­to veins could tur­bocharge pro­tec­tion, mon­key study finds

A cen­tu­ry-old tu­ber­cu­lo­sis (TB) vac­cine may be a can­di­date for a facelift af­ter an­i­mal study da­ta sug­gest ad­min­is­ter­ing it in­tra­venous­ly can aug­ment its ef­fi­ca­cy.

The vac­cine de­vel­oped to com­bat TB — the dead­liest glob­al in­fec­tion — is based on a live strain of the re­lat­ed pathogen My­cobac­teri­um bo­vis, which was at­ten­u­at­ed be­tween 1908 and 1921. The strain, known as bacille Cal­mette–Guérin (BCG), has since been ad­min­is­tered to more than one bil­lion peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to the WHO.

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