New, more effective tuberculosis vaccine developed

The origins of vaccines go back to the turn of the 19th century when Edward Jenner noticed that dairymaids who had been previously infected with cowpox were immune to smallpox. From there, he created the first “vaccine” — he gave patients cowpox to protect them from the more deadly smallpox. But a Pitt researcher is putting a new spin on the old model of giving vaccines to patients. Pitt researcher JoAnne Flynn published a January study that found that a tuberculosis vaccine injected intravenously — administered via the bloodstream — is more effective than the same vaccine injected into the muscle. The current TB vaccine remains largely ineffective, and 1.5 million people died of the disease in 2018, according to a World Health Organization report. Intravenous vaccines are a modern conception — there are no intravenous vaccines currently on the market, according to Flynn. The only other intravenous vaccine — an experimental malaria...