New vaccines needed to stop Beijing TB strain
The most common strains of tuberculosis in the most highly infected parts of the world may not be covered by the BCG vaccine according to Dutch medical researchers speaking today (Monday 10 September 2001) at the bi-annual meeting of the Society of General Microbiology at the University of East Anglia. "We think that in Asia, the former USSR republics and other areas, Beijing type strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis play a major role in the TB epidemic" says Dr Dick van Soolingen of the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, in Bilthoven, the Netherlands. "The Beijing strains are also more frequently resistant to the most important drugs used to treat tuberculosis". The r