Posted on 08/01/2021 11:25:09 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Cedars-Sinai Research Raises Possibility That a Century-Old Vaccine May Be Useful Against Coronavirus
A widely used tuberculosis vaccine is associated with reduced likelihood of contracting COVID-19 (coronavirus), according to a new study by Cedars-Sinai. The findings raise the possibility that a vaccine already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may help prevent coronavirus infections or reduce severity of the disease.
The vaccine, known as Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), was developed between1908 and 1921 and is administered to more than 100 million children around the world every year. In the U.S., it is FDA-approved as a drug to treat bladder cancer and as a vaccine for people at high risk of contracting TB. The BCG vaccine is currently being tested in multiple clinical trials worldwide for effectiveness against COVID-19.
In the new study, published online Nov. 19 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, investigators tested the blood of more than 6,000 healthcare workers in the Cedars-Sinai Health System for evidence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and also asked them about their medical and vaccination histories.
They found that workers who had received BCG vaccinations in the past—nearly 30% of those studied—were significantly less likely to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in their blood or to report having had infections with coronavirus or coronavirus-associated symptoms over the prior six months than those who had not received BCG. These effects were not related to whether workers had received meningococcal, pneumococcal or influenza vaccinations.
The reasons for the lower SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels in the BCG group were not clear, according to Moshe Arditi, MD, director of the Pediatric and Infectious Diseases and Immunology Division at Cedars-Sinai and co-senior author of the study.
"It appears that BCG-vaccinated individuals either may have been less sick and therefore produced fewer anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, or they may have mounted a more efficient cellular immune response against the virus," said Arditi, professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Sciences. "We were interested in studying the BCG vaccine because it has long been known to have a general protective effect against a range of bacterial and viral diseases other than TB, including neonatal sepsis and respiratory infections."
In the new study, the lower antibody levels in the BCG group persisted despite the fact that these individuals had higher frequencies of hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and COPD, which are known risk factors for being more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and developing the more severe forms of COVID-19 illness.
While noting that no one believes BCG will be more effective than a specific vaccine for COVID-19, Arditi explained that it could be more quickly approved and made available, given that it has a strong safety profile demonstrated by many years of use. "It is a potentially important bridge that could offer some benefit until we have the most effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines made widely available," he said.
"Given our findings, we believe that large, randomized clinical trials are urgently needed to confirm whether BCG vaccination can induce a protective effect against SARS-CoV2 infection," said Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, MMSc, associate professor of Cardiology and director of Public Health Research at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. She was the other co-senior author of the study. The first author was Magali Noval Rivas, PhD, assistant professor of Pediatrics at Cedars-Sinai.
In fact, a number of randomized clinical trials have been launched to study the potential protective effects of BCG vaccination against COVID-19. Along with Texas A&M University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Cedars Sinai is a site for the U.S. arm of this ongoing trial, which is recruiting hundreds of healthcare workers. Arditi serves as the principal investigator of this clinical trial at Cedars-Sinai.
“It would it be wonderful if one of the oldest vaccines that we have could help defeat the world's newest pandemic," Arditi said.
Makes sense, even to a layperson, considering interrelationship of respiratory infections and the shared immune-priming nature of vaccines.
OFF label medical procedures have been known to be beneficial in the past.
This medication is already FDA approved, and known.
Further research and study should be immediately applied !
Many people dislike the COVID19 shots because of the lack of long-term testing/observation and the attendant messenger RNA platform.
If the TB vaccine turns out to hold promise, that should be welcome news. After all, the virus is the enemy, not my fellow man (unless you're a Springsteen fan...).
I had bcg many years ago, probably too long to be effective- i test positive for tb skin test, need a blood test instead.
In the 1960s I received Tuberculosis scratches in school and now I always test positive for TB ,D’oh
Old story, first reported on in April 2020, seems real and it is pretty interesting.
I considered getting it in the November 2020 surge but chose to wait for Pfizer. I probably will boost this month.
They just have this bloodlust for injecting stuff into us, don’t they?
They could have been investigating, really, truly, with actual science, investigating HCQ and Ivermection with such diligence.
But they didn’t and they aren’t.
A pill does into prep people for injections of unknown substances into them, no matter what the bottle is marked.
And if shown to be effective it must be suppressed.
I got my TB tine test in 1966 and recently had a TB test that showed negative. I had heard that those scratch tests would make one test positive for life.
I wonder if the timing of this announcement has anything to do with rampant illegal immigration...
And an influx of TB carriers....
Roaming Manhattan court worker tests positive for tuberculosis
BTW, the article's full of it on this point...
Tuberculosis (TB) (PDFpdf icon – 131 KB) Respiratory Protection in Health-Care Settings
...disposable muzzles ain't gonna do it.
Bkmk
As for myself, I will abstain from getting ANY vaccinations for the time being. I know what these people are capable of. This isn’t a denial of the value of vaccines, just that right now I think it is foolish to believe anything these “experts” tell you.
Been a number of studies on this topic. Still await the RCT. May explain why COVID’s worse in Western countries not using BCG.
Here is a link showing which countries use it: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001012.g002
• A study does not support that BCG Vaccinations in childhood has a protective effect against COVID-19 in adulthood (JAMA 2020;323:22). BCG was routinely administered to all newborns in Isreael as part of the national immunization program from 1955 to 1982. They tested aproximately 3,000 adults with and without the vaccine and found no difference in positivity rates or cases of severe disease (there was only 1 case in each group and no deaths making this study a bit inconclusive)
* BCG vaccination Associated with reduced severity of COVID-19. Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study. (2020.03.24.20042937. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v1.full.pdf).
• Non-specific effects of BCG vaccine on viral infections. Narrative review. 2019 25(12).
• A retrospective study shows that recent BCG vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic was not associated with symptoms of hyperinflammation and was associated with decreased incidence of sickness and fatigue (Cell Rep Med. 2020 Aug 05;EPub Ahead of Print).
• Nonspecific (Heterologous) Protection of Neonatal BCG Vaccination Against Hospitalization Due to Respiratory Infection and Sepsis. Clin Infect Dis. 2015;60(11):1611–1619.
• After mitigating multiple confounding factors, several significant associations between BCG vaccination and reduced COVID-19 deaths were observed (PNAS. 2020;first published July 9). Randomized clinical trials ongoing in Holland and Australia, in which health workers are administered either the BCG vaccine or a placebo saline injection, will determine the extent to which BCG vaccination in adults confers protection from COVID-19. There is limited information on the safety of administering BCG to senior persons, since BCG is a vaccine based on a live attenuated Mycobacterium that should not be administered to immunocompromised individuals (49).
• Intravesical BCG appears to have a protective role against COVID-19 mortality (2.3% vs 14% case fatality rate, respectively) according to data from 175 Chilean patients between the ages of 70 and 79 with non–muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) who had received BCG (induction or maintenance) were compared with the national statistics for the same age group (BMC Urol 2021;21(1)50). This effect is speculated to occur through the activation of the systemic immune response by intravesicular BCG.
The BCG vaccine is currently being tested in multiple clinical trials worldwide for effectiveness against COVID-19.”
OFF label medical procedures have been known to be beneficial in the past.
This medication is already FDA approved, and known.
Further research and study should be immediately applied !
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That would be awesome and an answer to prayers if it turns out to be ok. And there would be sufficient data to know who is likely to have adverse reactions if any.
If it works out, I wonder if people who were exposed to TB, but never had noticeable symptoms would have similar immunity?
The problem is that at this point I would not trust them that they are injecting you with that instead of the frankenshot.
Biden’s tuberculosis train is getting longer by the day media mum.
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