A study by immunologists from St John’s Research Institute (SJRI) has found that Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) revaccination in adults enhanced pro-inflammatory markers of trained immunity along with anti-inflammatory pathways. The study was published in iScience, a peer reviewed scientific journal last month.
BCG is a live attenuated vaccine of Mycobacterium bovis that has been used for tuberculosis (TB) control in the young for more than a century. It is part of vaccination programmes in several TB-endemic countries. In India, BCG is routinely administered to newborns and is the first vaccine administered after birth.
The efficacy of BCG in TB control is variable and wanes with age, prompting several studies to explore adult BCG revaccination. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is now conducting large-scale clinical trials to explore if BCG revaccination can be used as a strategy in the fight against TB in India, said Annapurna Vyakarnam, whose Human Immunology Laboratory is based at SJRI.
