More than a dozen vaccines for tuberculosis are currently being tested in clinical trials. Some use whole bacteria as BCG does, while others deliver protein subunits or genetic material carried by viral vectors.
This month marks the 100-year anniversary of BCG, still the only approved vaccine against the lethal pathogen. But there are new vaccines for this wily foe on the horizon.
The Scientist Creative Services Team | Oct 29, 2020
Angela Rasmussen and Ya-Chi Ho explore the positive and negative aspects of the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and discuss how this knowledge influences therapeutic benefits.
By avoiding the production of antibodies, something vaccines ordinarily induce, the immunization sidesteps the problem of antibody-dependent enhancement, which can amplify infection by a similar virus and is known to occur with dengue and Zika.
A study of people in Sierra Leone suggests that the virus can lie in hiding from the immune system before re-emerging later and sparking a new response—although researchers didn’t examine whether this could make people infectious again.
A meta-analysis of seven randomized controlled trials concludes that dexamethasone and other corticosteroids reduce 28-day mortality in seriously ill patients.