Abstract
Chemotherapy with antituberculous agents is usually not effective for lung tuberculoma. The lesion becomes frequently a subject of lung resection. We succeeded to treat the lung tuberculoma with combination of chemotherapy and injection of heat-killed vaccine prepared from Mycobacterium intracellulare.
The patient was a 42-years-old, male teacher, who had tuberculoma, 18 by 20 mm, in his right upper lobe. The patient was treated with chemotherapy (streptomycin+isoniazid+p-aminosalicylate) and weekly injections with heat-killed vaccine for 7 months. The tuberculoma was liquefied after 2 months and disappeared completely after 7 months. The chemotherapy with SM+INH+PAS which was administered for one year before the vaccine therapy was ineffective.
The vaccine was prepared as follows: Yoshida strain of M. intracellulare was cultivated on Sauton agar for 4 weeks. The organism was washed with distilled water and suspended in saline at a concentration of 10 mg, wet weight per ml. The suspension was sterilized by heating at 100°C for 10 minutes. A 0.1 ml sample (1mg) of the suspension was injected interdermally.
