Mice with pulmonary tuberculosis treated with Mycobacterium vaccae develop strikingly enhanced recall gamma interferon responses to M. vaccae cell wall skeleton.

ABSTRACT

Whole heat-killed Mycobacterium vaccae is used as an immunotherapeutic agent in tuberculosis (TB), but the compound(s) that triggers its immunostimulatory ability is not known. Here, we show that among different subcellular fractions, the cell wall skeleton induced a prominent expression of gamma interferon in splenocytes from both non-TB and TB M. vaccae-treated mice.