Immunotherapy for tuberculosis: future prospects

Tuberculosis (TB) is still a major global health problem. A third of the world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Only similar to 10% of infected individuals develop TB but there are 9 million TB cases with 1.5 million deaths annually. The standard prophylactic treatment regimens for latent TB infection take 3-9 months, and new cases of TB require at least 6 months of treatment with multiple drugs. The management of latent TB infection and TB has become more challenging because of the spread of multidrug-resistant and extremely drug-resistant-TB. Intensified efforts to find new TB drugs and immunotherapies are needed. Immunotherapies could modulate the immune system in patients with latent TB infection or active disease, enabling better control of M. tuberculosis replication. This review describes several types of potential immunotherapies with a focus on those which have been tested in humans.