Role of antibodies in vaccine-mediated protection against tuberculosis

摘要

The development of an effective prophylactic tuberculosis(TB)vaccine has been the most targeted objective in TB research since the currently used Bacillus Calmette–Guerin(BCG)vaccine is effective only against primary childhood disease but not against the most common form,pulmonary disease.For the past approximately five decades,protective immunity was considered to be mediated by T cells,but the resulting extensive testing of cellular subsets(i.e.,CD4,CD8,Th1/2,γδ,and Treg cells)and their cytokine products failed to identify a reliable test that correlated with protection following infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis(Mtb)or vaccination.