Vaccine may prevent TB in HIV patients

HANOVER, N.H., Feb. 1 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers have conducted a phase III clinical trial of a vaccine against tuberculosis for those with human immunodeficiency virus.

The researchers at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, N.H., used Mycobacterium vaccae -- a family of bacteria that lives naturally in soil related to the tuberculosis bacterium -- to prevent TB in patients infected with HIV.

TB was targeted in HIV patients because it is the most common cause of death from HIV in developing countries. Newly infected HIV patients risk contracting TB almost immediately and the Dartmouth researchers say they sought to immunize HIV patients before they started taking anti-retroviral drugs.

The DarDar Health Study -- named for Dartmouth and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the site of the trial -- found Mycobacterium vaccae immunization reduced the rate of definite tuberculosis by 39 percent among 2,000 HIV-infected patients.

"Since development of a new vaccine against tuberculosis is a major international health priority, especially for patients with HIV infection, we and our Tanzanian collaborators are very encouraged by the results of the DarDar Study," study principal investigator Dr. Ford von Reyn said in a statement.

The findings of the seven-year, randomized, placebo-controlled trial were published online ahead of print in the journal AIDS.