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A Booster for Tuberculosis Vaccines
Christopher Dye, DPhil
JAMA. 2004;291:2127-2128.
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In 1935, a cohort of Native Americans began to enroll in an experiment designed to address a topic about which everybody was unsure, if not entirely ignorant: the efficacy of BCG vaccination against tuberculosis (TB). In the early 1930s, 2 decades before the advent of combination chemotherapy, 65 of every 10 000 Alaska Natives and Eskimos died of TB each year.1 For those unfortunate enough to develop active disease following infection, the principal remedies were fresh air and hope. With a case-fatality rate of about 50%, the prognosis for patients with TB was grim.
The BCG vaccine had been developed by 1921, and a collection of experiences in the 1920s suggested that it could markedly reduce both TB incidence and mortality. But doubts remained because no large, properly controlled prospective studies of its efficacy had been conducted. Given the early promise of BCG, the new series of immunization . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Author Affiliation: World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
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Naomi E. Aronson, Mathuram Santosham, George W. Comstock, Robin S. Howard, Lawrence H. Moulton, Everett R. Rhoades, and Lee H. Harrison
JAMA. 2004;291(17):2086-2091.
ABSTRACT
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