Genetically susceptible mice remain proportionally more susceptible to tuberculosis after vaccination

DBA/2 mice are much more susceptible to infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis than major histocompatibility complex-compatible BALB/c mice. It is shown here that, although vaccination provided mice of both strains with a capacity to reduce the level of infection in their lungs, vaccinated DBA/2 mice remained much more susceptible in this organ than vaccinated BALB/c mice. Consequently, the former mice developed more lung pathology and died much earlier than the latter. On the other hand, colony-forming unit counts and histology suggest that vaccination provided mice of both strains with an increased and equal ability to express immunity in the liver and spleen, thereby indicating that they possessed equal systemic levels of vaccine-induced immunity at the time of M. tuberculosis challenge. The results indicate that inefficient expression of immunity in the lungs is likely to prove an obstacle to successful vaccination against tuberculosis in resistant and susceptible mouse strains, but more so in the latter strains.