A tuberculosis vaccine may play a role in reducing Covid-19 mortality, according to a study, China news

A centuries-old tuberculosis vaccine may play a role in reducing Covid-19 mortality in widely used countries, according to a preliminary US study.

Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health linked to Calmette Guerlain (BCG) after comparing data on Covid-19 mortality worldwide.

They found that some areas of Latin America (such as Pernambuco in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Mexico City in Mexico) have significantly lower mortality rates than US states such as New York, Illinois, Louisiana, and Florida. did.

“This is amazing. [these parts of] Latin America has a much higher population density than states in North America, including New York,” co-author Carolina Barrys-Mulley wrote Tuesday in a peer-reviewed article in the Bulletin of the National Academy of Sciences. ..

In Europe, Germany has also given amazing results. Mortality from Covid-19 was 2.9 times higher in former West Germany than in former East Germany. Also, the mortality rate in Italy was four times that in Finland.

Studies found that lower mortality rates differed in age distribution, income, and access to health care, but they all had one thing in common: a tuberculosis vaccination program.

In Germany, for example, the BCG vaccination plan was different than it was before it was unified in 1990.

Former East Germany started inoculating children to TB 10 years earlier than in the West. This means that older Germans in the eastern part of the country are likely to have been vaccinated. Older people are considered to be at higher risk for Covid-19.

Based on the data, researchers estimated that a 10% increase in TB vaccine coverage could reduce Covid-19 deaths by 10%.

The researchers also challenged the World Health Organization’s position on the TB vaccine to be effective “no evidence”. This is not the first study of BCG’s potential protection from Covid-19.

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WHO said in April: “Ecological studies like this tend to be a big bias from many confounding factors, including different demographics and burdens of disease, prevalence of Covid-19 virus infections, and stages of pandemic in different countries. .”

Louis Escobar, co-author of the latest study, said the study takes into account WHO’s concerns. “Every country is different. Guatemala’s population is younger than in Italy and we had to adjust our data to account for these differences,” he said.

Researchers said the positive effects of the vaccine were found to be important, but they didn’t have a definitive answer as to why.

BCG, named after French microbiologists Albert Calmette and Camille Guerlain, contains a live strain of Mycobaterium bovis, the causative agent of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

The disease, which killed 1 in 7 people in the United States and Europe at the turn of the 20th century, became preventable after the vaccine was introduced in 1921.

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Previous studies have shown that the vaccine may also give children broad protection against other illnesses not related to tuberculosis, such as respiratory infections. This phenomenon has been reported in countries such as Guinea-Bissau and Spain.

Barillas-Mury said researchers think the vaccine could “train” the child’s innate immune response.

She also said in a Wednesday statement that if the vaccine turned out to be defensive against Covid-19, “to respond to a sudden surge in vaccine demand to prevent delays in distribution to countries where it is very needed. Will need to increase production.” To fight tuberculosis”

However, researchers warned that their results were preliminary and should not be used to guide government policy at this stage.

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This article was originally published South China Morning Post..