Salutes dead people the best kind
They bite and shut the fuck up
Joe mondello learned how to vote and make dead people from the masters of nyc
Get dead and vote even if you cannot get BCG in Hochul country and she like so many others have never heard of g ristori or read faustmanlab.org or publications patents etc
Dumb dumber dumbest and the shiniest stupid in the world
The wsj is slower than slow
BCG Vaccine for Tuberculosis Offers Covid-19 Protection, Study Suggests
Shots helped people with type 1 diabetes avoid coronavirus, says Massachusetts General Hospital team
The BCG vaccine is given more than 100 million times a year around the globe to infants, but it isn’t part of the standard vaccination program in the U.S.
PHOTO: NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
A widely used tuberculosis vaccine protected people with Type 1 diabetes from Covid-19, according to a Massachusetts General Hospital study published Monday that further illustrates the potential immune-enhancing powers of the shot, called BCG.
The vaccine, a weakened version of the tuberculosis bacterium that infects cows, is given more than 100 million times a year around the globe to infants, but it isn’t part of the standard vaccination program in the U.S. Doctors have long suspected it has additional effects beyond tuberculosis prevention.
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, the Mass General team was already studying whether BCG could treat Type 1 diabetes by helping eliminate harmful immune cells that attack the pancreas. The trial, which had enrolled patients two to three years before Covid-19 hit, randomly sorted the patients into two groups: one received three BCG doses and the other, a placebo group for comparison, was given shots with no medicine.
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With the advent of the pandemic virus, the team decided to look at the same two groups and see whether the BCG vaccine could protect people against Covid-19.
By 15 months into the pandemic, six of the 48 people in the placebo group came down with Covid-19, compared with just one person of the 96 in the group that received the BCG vaccine. While the trial was small, the doctors said the result was statistically significant, and the BCG patients also had fewer infections overall.
“There’s incredible boosting of the immune response after you get BCG,” said Mass General team leader Denise Faustman, who is also associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the scientific understanding of its transmission and prevention has evolved. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez explains what strategies have worked for stemming the spread of the virus and which are outdated in 2022. Illustration: Adele MorganTHE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
The study was published Monday in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.
Doctors not involved in the study said the results, while noteworthy, wouldn’t change current Covid-19 prevention practices, which focus on vaccines specifically designed for the Covid-19 virus.
Those vaccines kick in after a few weeks, while the Mass General study suggested it would take about two years after the first BCG shot for the vaccine to have maximum effectiveness. That is how long it took for study subjects to begin to get significant protection against infectious diseases.
While doctors have hoped BCG could serve in future pandemics as a “quick stopgap until a target-specific vaccine could be made,” the new research suggests it couldn’t serve that purpose, said Dr. Naoto Keicho of Japan’s Research Institute of Tuberculosis.
Other studies that began in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic found administering BCG didn’t help, at least in the short term.
Studies by Dr. Faustman’s group and others have suggested that the BCG vaccine works not by generating antibodies against a specific virus or bacterium but by boosting the immune system’s general capabilities. Dr. Faustman said that over time, BCG may train the body’s innate immunity to shift into a state of higher readiness.
The vaccine offers “an additional path for protection,” she said. “This is a vaccine that doesn’t care if Covid mutates 15 more times.”
Much remains unknown about when it is effective. Caryn Upton, who was one of the leaders of a South African trial that found no benefit from BCG vaccination for Covid-19, said many South Africans have already been infected with tuberculosis and may get no additional help from BCG.
Dr. Upton said BCG is used around the world mainly to prevent severe disease in children, including tuberculosis and other potentially fatal infections. Evidence also suggests efficacy against some hepatitis viruses, influenza, fungi and bacterial infections, she said.
“It’s worth investing more money and time in clinical trials to really tease out where it can be most useful,” Dr. Upton said.
BCG vaccination is available in the U.S., but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it isn’t generally recommended because of the low risk of tuberculosis infection.
BCG stands for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin and is named after the scientists who created it more than a century ago. Because the vaccine consists of a live bacteria still undergoing evolution, different countries use different strains, and Dr. Faustman said she believed the Tokyo version, made by Japan BCG Laboratory, was among the most effective.
Dr. Faustman said Mass General was acting as the sponsor of the Tokyo BCG vaccine as it goes through clinical trials in the U.S. She said the hospital planned to seek emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to give the BCG vaccine to those with Type 1 diabetes. The disease is typically caused by a misfiring immune system that attacks the body’s own cells. Those who have it tend to get more infections.
A number of studies have tried to determine whether regions with standard BCG vaccination in infants have withstood the Covid-19 pandemic better. Dr. Faustman observed that countries such as Japan and South Korea using the Tokyo BCG strain have had relatively few deaths from Covid-19.
However, with so many variables including the general health of the population, it has proven difficult to determine the effect of BCG. Some studies have suggested it didn’t make a difference.
Write to Miho Inada at miho.inada@wsj.comand Suryatapa Bhattacharya at Suryatapa.Bhattacharya@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The BCG vaccine consists of live bacteria. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it consists of a live virus. (Corrected on August 15.)
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