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Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses

The Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) vaccine provides protection against tuberculosis (TB), and is thought to provide protection against non-TB infectious diseases. BCG vaccination has recently been proposed as a strategy to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 (CoV-2) to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, su...

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Autores principales: Hensel, Janine, McAndrews, Kathleen M., McGrail, Daniel J., Dowlatshahi, Dara P., LeBleu, Valerie S., Kalluri, Raghu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7591473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33110184
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75491-x
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author Hensel, Janine
McAndrews, Kathleen M.
McGrail, Daniel J.
Dowlatshahi, Dara P.
LeBleu, Valerie S.
Kalluri, Raghu
author_facet Hensel, Janine
McAndrews, Kathleen M.
McGrail, Daniel J.
Dowlatshahi, Dara P.
LeBleu, Valerie S.
Kalluri, Raghu
author_sort Hensel, Janine
collection PubMed
description The Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) vaccine provides protection against tuberculosis (TB), and is thought to provide protection against non-TB infectious diseases. BCG vaccination has recently been proposed as a strategy to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 (CoV-2) to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, supported by its potential to boost innate immunity and initial epidemiological analyses which observed reduced severity of COVID-19 in countries with universal BCG vaccination policies. Seventeen clinical trials are currently registered to inform on the benefits of BCG vaccinations upon exposure to CoV-2. Numerous epidemiological analyses showed a correlation between incidence of COVID-19 and BCG vaccination policies. These studies were not systematically corrected for confounding variables. We observed that after correction for confounding variables, most notably testing rates, there was no association between BCG vaccination policy and COVD-19 spread rate or percent mortality. Moreover, we found variables describing co-morbidities, including cardiovascular death rate and smoking prevalence, were significantly associated COVID-19 spread rate and percent mortality, respectively. While reporting biases may confound our observations, our epidemiological findings do not provide evidence to correlate overall BCG vaccination policy with the spread of CoV-2 and its associated mortality.
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spelling pubmed-75914732020-10-28 Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses Hensel, Janine McAndrews, Kathleen M. McGrail, Daniel J. Dowlatshahi, Dara P. LeBleu, Valerie S. Kalluri, Raghu Sci Rep Article The Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) vaccine provides protection against tuberculosis (TB), and is thought to provide protection against non-TB infectious diseases. BCG vaccination has recently been proposed as a strategy to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 (CoV-2) to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, supported by its potential to boost innate immunity and initial epidemiological analyses which observed reduced severity of COVID-19 in countries with universal BCG vaccination policies. Seventeen clinical trials are currently registered to inform on the benefits of BCG vaccinations upon exposure to CoV-2. Numerous epidemiological analyses showed a correlation between incidence of COVID-19 and BCG vaccination policies. These studies were not systematically corrected for confounding variables. We observed that after correction for confounding variables, most notably testing rates, there was no association between BCG vaccination policy and COVD-19 spread rate or percent mortality. Moreover, we found variables describing co-morbidities, including cardiovascular death rate and smoking prevalence, were significantly associated COVID-19 spread rate and percent mortality, respectively. While reporting biases may confound our observations, our epidemiological findings do not provide evidence to correlate overall BCG vaccination policy with the spread of CoV-2 and its associated mortality. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC7591473/ /pubmed/33110184 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75491-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Hensel, Janine
McAndrews, Kathleen M.
McGrail, Daniel J.
Dowlatshahi, Dara P.
LeBleu, Valerie S.
Kalluri, Raghu
Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
title Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
title_full Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
title_fullStr Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
title_full_unstemmed Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
title_short Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
title_sort protection against sars-cov-2 by bcg vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7591473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33110184
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75491-x
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