A TB Vaccine for HIVers?

Even though tuberculosis kills more people with HIV than any other AIDS-related ailment, HIVers have been unable to take the only available TB vaccine because the bacteria in the shot can reactivate if a person's immune system grows too weak. Even HIVers inoculated as children face the possibility of developing TB as adults. But now researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, say they've crafted a preventive shot specifically tailored for HIVers that avoids long-term TB risks. They engineered TB bacteria that can replicate only a handful of times, creating enough copies in the body to prompt long-term immunity but not enough to pose a later reactivation risk. Animal tests have shown the shot to be highly effective, and human trials are now planned. The researchers also plan to examine whether similarly engineered bacteria would be useful for vaccines against anthrax, tularemia, and Legionnaires' disease.