Different Strokes for Different Folks

Tuberculosis vaccines currently on trial at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds will not adequately protect populations living close to the Equator, a new study warns. In a report in Nature Reviews Immunology, scientists from University College London claim vaccines designed in the developed world do not take into account differences in immune systems across the globe.Professor Graham Rook, of the UCL Centre for Infectious Diseases and International Health, explained:

It is already known that the BCG vaccine works in the northern hemisphere but not close to the Equator, where countries within 30 degrees latitude of the Equator have the greatest failure rates. Yet vaccine design continues to ignore crucial differences in immune systems between populations. We are not saying that funding for TB vaccination in developing countries should be stopped – quite the contrary, given that TB kills between two and three million people every year. But we are concerned that the BCG vaccine is failing these countries and that TB vaccines currently on trial are likely to go the same way.