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Woman contracts world's deadliest virus after unknowingly being given the wrong vaccine READ MORE: Fears that record TB outbreak in Kansas is tip of the iceberg By CASSIDY MORRISON SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM Published: 15:58 EDT, 26 March 2025 | Updated: 15:58 EDT, 26 March 2025 e-mail View comments A woman who was given the wrong vaccine developed a severe case of one of the world's deadliest diseases. The healthy 30-year-old went to a clinic to receive a measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
However, the medical professional who gave her the shot made a dire mistake. Instead, the woman was injected with a vaccine for tuberculosis, the deadliest infection in the world, with an estimated 1.2 million deaths each year, resulting in a severe tuberculosis (TB) infection that required six months of recovery.
The TB vaccine in typically given to babies soon after they are born, making any adverse events more common among that group. Severe complications of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine for TB, particularly in healthy people, are rare, with about one to 10 percent of recipients recorded in the medical literature having experienced them. These complications range from relatively mild - blisters at the injection site and swelling - to life-threatening lesions in the lungs, liver, or spleen, inflamed bones, and widespread infection.
The patient, from Ireland, developed an abscess with oozing pus at the site on her arm where she was injected. After weeks of doctors’ struggling to identify the cause, believing at first it was caused by inflamed connective tissue in the skin, they tested the pus. Testing revealed the woman had TB-causing bacteria in her body, possibly caused by the strain more common in cattle , which is used in a weakened form to make the vaccine.
The BCG vaccine was incorrectly injected into the muscle, though it should have been administered under the skin. Because the BCG contains bacteria, not viruses like the MMR shot, injecting it into the muscle allowed the bacteria to spread unchecked, leading to infection in the deltoid muscle. TB typically causes a lung infection, but in this case, the otherwise healthy patient developed swelling in her arm as a result of the incorrect vaccine being administered in the wrong way ‘Administration of the BCG vaccine intramuscularly is commonly the result of an error and can lead to rare and preventable complications, even in immunocompetent patients,’ doctors who reported the case said.
‘A reasonable explanation for the error in this case is that the healthcare professional administering the vaccine confused the [the TB vaccine] for the MMR vaccine.’ The person who administered the BCG vaccine did so in the way that an MMR vaccine is meant to be administered – via injection at the muscle level because the weakened forms of the viruses replicate slowly there, prompting a stronger immune response. Read More Surge in world's deadliest infection reported - it 'resembles a cold' in early stages, experts warn The TB vaccine, which contains a weakened form of the bacteria Mycobacterium bovis, is meant to be injected just below the skin, which triggers a local immune reponse where the bacteria can stimulate immunity without spreading to other parts of the body.
Viruses used to make vaccines like the MMR replicate inside cells when injected into the muscle, but the bacteria used to make the BCG vaccine is more easily controlled when administrered under the skin. When injected into the muscle, the bacteria was allowed to spread more easily into the deltoid muscle, where the immune system could not stop the TB-causing bacteria from spreading unchecked. This led to an abscess in the 30-year-old's arm, which doctors still say is a rare occurrence ‘primarily in the pediatric population.
’ The adverse effects doctors are likely to see include injection-site abscess, inflammation of the lymph nodes, chronic bone pain and mobility problems, and a body-wide infection causing fever, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes, enlarged liver, severe cough, arthritis, particularly in immunocompromised patients. The healthy 30-year-old patient was mistakenly given the vaccine for TB, which was injected improperly, resulting in a whole-body infection and a fluid-filled abscess in her deltoid muscle, indicated by the arrow The woman was treated with a variety of anti-TB medications, which were effective, ‘and she recovered fully and reported no further symptoms 6 months after initiation of the anti-tuberculosis treatment,’ the doctors said. Three months later, her abscess had shrunken considerably.
Doctors said her case was highly unusual. Typically, complications – already rare – are seen in babies and young children, generally those who are immunocompromised. This patient, though, ‘was a healthy immunocompetent adult, in contrast to the cases in the literature.
’ Their report was published in the American Journal of Case Reports . Injection errors are the main culprit and the most common causes of such a severe reaction. The NIH published the case of an eight-month-old girl who, at birth, received the tuberculosis vaccine in her thigh muscle instead of into her skin as it was meant to be administered.
Your browser does not support iframes. She developed swelling at the spot where she was injected, and the mass there grew bigger and bigger. Doctors drained it and tested the liquid inside, finding it was an infection caused by Mycobacterium bovis, which grew slowly in the muscle over time, forming an abscess under the skin.
Localized abscesses are not typically deadly, though if they go untreated, allowing the infection to spread throughout the body, they can become deadly up to 80 percent of the time. Share or comment on this article: Woman contracts world's deadliest virus after unknowingly being given the wrong vaccine e-mail Add comment Comments 0 Share what you think No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards.
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