Development of tuberculosis vaccines for cattle.
2007
Buddle, B. M. | Collins, D. M.
Bovine tuberculosis causes enormous economic losses worldwide and constitutes a serious public health risk in many developing countries. Vaccination of cattle against this disease has the potential to become an important control strategy in developing countries that do not find a test and slaughter programme acceptable or cannot afford it. Vaccination may also have some limited use in developed countries that have a wildlife reservoir of <i>Mycobacterium bovis</i> infection. Considerable recent progress has been made in the development and evaluation of tuberculosis vaccines for cattle. Neonatal vaccination with bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) has been more effective than vaccination of 6-month-old calves, but BCG is less protective than newly attenuated <i>M. bovis</i> strains when animals are presensitized to environmental mycobacteria. Prime-boost strategies involving combinations of BCG plus a protein or DNA vaccine, to improve on BCG vaccination alone, have produced encouraging results but further improvement is required. Differential diagnostic tests have been developed using mycobacterial antigens that are only present in virulent <i>M. bovis</i>, in order to differentiate between BCG-vaccinated and <i>M. bovis</i>-infected cattle. Future prospects for further improvement of vaccines against bovine tuberculosis in cattle are promising and vaccination could become important for the control of this disease when other control strategies are not economically or socially practicable.
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