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BCG: Can A Vaccine From 1921 Save Lives From Covid-19?

BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin) vaccine for tuberculosis, pictured at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1931.

Scientists in the UK have begun testing the BCG vaccine, developed in 1921, to see if it can save lives from Covid.

The vaccine was designed to stop tuberculosis, but there is some evidence it can protect against other infections as well.

But while millions of people in the UK will have had the BCG jab as a child, it is thought they would need to be vaccinated again to benefit.

Vaccines are designed to train the immune system in a highly targeted way that leaves lasting protection against one particular infection.

But this process also causes wide-spread changes in the immune system. This seems to heighten the response to other infections and scientists hope it may even give our bodies an advantage against coronavirus.

Previous clinical trials have shown the BCG jab reduced deaths by 38% in newborns in Guinea-Bissau, mostly by reducing cases of pneumonia and sepsis.

Studies in South Africa linked the vaccine to a 73% reduction in infections in the nose, throat and lungs; experiments in the Netherlands showed BCG reduced the amount of yellow fever virus in the body.

"This could be of major importance globally," Prof John Campbell, of the University of Exeter Medical School, told the BBC.

"Whilst we don't think it [the protection] will be specific to Covid, it has the potential to buy several years of time for the Covid vaccines to come through and perhaps other treatments to be developed."

The UK trial is part of the international Brace-study, which is also taking place in Australia, the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil, recruiting 10,000 people in total.

It will focus on health and care workers, as they are more likely to be exposed to coronavirus, so researchers will know more quickly if the vaccine is effective.

Sam Hilton, a GP from Exeter, is taking part in the trials since, as a doctor, he is at higher risk of catching Covid.

"There's quite a good theory BCG might make you less likely to get unwell when you get Covid," he told the BBC.

"So I see it as a potential for me to get protected a bit, which means I'm more likely to come to work this winter."

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, is one of the authors of a Lancet article saying the BCG vaccine has the potential to "bridge the gap before a disease-specific vaccine is developed".

"This would be an important tool in the response to Covid-19 and future pandemics," the article states.

However, the BCG vaccine will not be a long-term solution.

Any enhanced resilience to Covid is expected to wane meaning people who were immunised with BCG in childhood would no longer have protection. BCG has not been routinely used in the UK since 2005 because levels of tuberculosis are so low.

Additionally, the vaccine will not train the immune system to produce the antibodies and specialist white blood cells that recognise and fight off the coronavirus.

The big goal remains a vaccine that specifically targets the coronavirus. Ten such vaccines are in the final stages of clinical research, including the one developed at the University of Oxford.

Prof Andrew Pollard, from the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the BBC: "The way that most vaccines work is to make a very specific immune response against the germ you are trying to prevent.

"But in order to make a good immune response, there is also a rather non-specific 'souping-up' of the immune response and that changes the way the immune system is able to respond in the future.

"The problem we have today is I can't tell you what you could do with other vaccines to try to improve your ability to respond to coronavirus because we have no evidence at all."

Could The BCG Vaccine Provide A Cheap Way Of Reversing Type 1 Diabetes?

Academic researchers in Massachusetts believe the standard BCG (bacillus Calmette-Guérin) vaccine could have a remarkable second use: a treatment to reverse advanced type 1 diabetes.

The cause of type 1 diabetes is well understood – it is the autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing beta cells. But despite many different methods being tried to reverse this effect, no-one has succeeded in producing a treatment.A number of companies, including type 1 diabetes giant Novo Nordisk, have been investing in stem cell research and beta cell regeneration methods, but none are yet close to gaining approval.

Researchers have known for some time that restoring levels of Treg cells, which prevent autoimmune attackes - might halt the abnormal self-reactivity in type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases.But therapies to restore this immune balance haven't achieved long-lasting result.

[caption id="attachment_28827" align="alignnone" width="250"] Denise Faustman[/caption]

Now interim results presented by Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Immunobiology Laboratory and a long-term researcher in the field, show greater promise.Her research suggests that BCG may induce a permanent increase in expression of genes that restore the beneficial regulatory T cells (Tregs), and thereby prevent the immune system from attacking the body's own tissue.Faustman's Massachusetts General Hospital team has discovered that BCG restores Tregs through epigenetics - a process that modulates whether or not genes are expressed.

Faustman says this is an exciting development. "This now provides a better idea of how BCG vaccination appears to work by powerfully modulating Treg induction and resetting the immune system to halt the underlying cause of the disease."

Tregs are the immune system's "brakes" that normally prevent misdirected attacks against tissues without dampening the entire system. Several research groups have suggested methods for harnessing Tregs to treat type 1 diabetes patients, but to date no therapies have been approved.

Best known for its role in tuberculosis prevention, the BCG vaccine is based on a harmless strain of bacteria related the one that causes tuberculosis. A generic drug with over 100 years of clinical use and safety data, BCG is currently approved by the FDA for vaccination against tuberculosis and for the treatment of bladder cancer.Faustman has spent 20 years searching for a cure for type 1 diabetes, and has met with considerable opposition and scepticism about her work, including the JDRF, the powerful US research charity.

The research is funded entirely by private philanthropy from individuals and family foundations, most notably the famous American ex-automotive industry leader Lee Iacocca. He has been funding Faustman's work since the 1990s via his Iacocca Family Foundation in memory of his wife, who died from complications of the disease.

"BCG is interesting because it brings into play so many areas of immunology that we as a community have been looking at for decades, including Tregs and the hygiene hypothesis," says Faustman. "Repeat BCG vaccination appears to permanently turn on signature Treg genes, and the vaccine's beneficial effect on host immune response recapitulates decades of human co-evolution with myocbacteria, a relationship that has been lost with modern eating and living habits. It is incredible that a safe and inexpensive vaccine may be the key to stopping these terrible diseases."

Despite resistance to her approaches, Faustman's work now appears to be gaining greater mainstream support. Faustman's research team was the first group to document reversal of advanced type 1 diabetes in mice and subsequently completed a successful phase I human clinical trial of BCG vaccination. The five-year, 150-person, phase 2 trial is investigating whether repeat BCG vaccination can clinically improve type 1 diabetes in adults with existing disease and is almost fully enrolled.

Long-term follow-up data from the phase I trial will be published later this year.

Coronavirus: BCG Rumours And Other Stories Fact-checked

BBC teams are fact-checking some of the most popular fake and misleading coronavirus stories on social media. Jack Goodman brings together what's been debunked this week by BBC Monitoring, Trending and Reality Check.

False claims about the BCG vaccine

WhatsApp messages claiming the BCG vaccine prevents coronavirus infection are inaccurate.

The Bacille Calmette-Guérin jab has been given to children around the world to fight off tuberculosis, and was widespread in secondary schools in the UK until 2005.

It's still given in the UK when a child or adult might be at risk of coming into contact with tuberculosis.

It's still common in many countries, such as Syria, where rumours are spreading that people shouldn't worry about coronavirus if they've had the BCG jab because it gives them immunity.

A WhatsApp message in Arabic says that if you have the circular scar from the jab on your arm, you could be "75% protected" against Covid-19.

The health body says two clinical trials are under way involving BCG, and when completed, their findings will be evaluated by the WHO.

Despite the lack of medical evidence, global search for the term "BCG" has spiked, according to Google.

The WHO is concerned that increased demand for the vaccine means there'll be less of it available to inoculate children against tuberculosis.

Similar fears have also been voiced by suppliers in Japan, reporting a surge in demand for the BCG vaccine.

A demonstration, broadcast on Iranian state TV, included no data to back up the theory behind the device

Iran's dodgy detector

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unveiled a hand-held device this week which he claimed could identify people infected with coronavirus - and even contaminated surfaces - up to a distance of 100m and within five seconds.

The Physics Society of Iran described the announcement as "pseudoscience", "unbelievable" and on a par with "sci-fi tales".

The device bears an uncanny resemblance to fake bomb detector tools sold by British fraudsters more than a decade ago, all of which claimed to use the same "electrostatic magnetic ion attraction".

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This latest device has an almost identical case and antenna.

Even the packaging, which can be seen in a clip of it being unveiled on Iranian state TV, looks similar.

The virus wasn't created in a lab

A video published by the Epoch Times, that contains claims that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory, has been marked false on Facebook where it has been watched almost 70 million times.

The opening feels like a slick and dramatic Netflix documentary - there's a flash and crack of a lightning bolt followed by ominous music.

The hour-long video includes a theory about a lab in Wuhan creating the virus and leaking it, due to poor security.

Scientific analysis of the evidence shows the virus came from animals, and was not man-made.

The video also refers to a study from Indian researchers that claimed to find four new sequences had been inserted into the new coronavirus, which were also present in HIV, to suggest the virus is man-made.

"Those sequences are so short that they match with many different organisms, not just HIV. It doesn't mean they're related," says Dr Jeremy Rossman, a virologist at the University of Kent.

The site spent heavily on pro-Donald Trump Facebook adverts last year, reported NBC News.

But in August Facebook banned it from taking out more ads for violating its policies.

More Bill Gates rumours

It followed familiar themes, such as criticising Mr Gates' support for vaccines.

Multiple posts resurfaced on Facebook claiming that a research institute funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation owns the patent on the coronavirus causing the current pandemic.

These claims are all totally unsubstantiated. The suggestion that Covid-19 is a human creation sponsored by Bill Gates is false.

False claims that the virus is fake are spreading online

The Covid pandemic is not fake

The coronavirus pandemic is "fake" and "truly a farce" is the claim of a holistic doctor interviewed by Canal Monteria, a Colombian news channel. The video went up last month but has now been viewed 18 million times and is still being shared on Facebook, which is why we're addressing it now.

The claim is clearly false - coronavirus does exist.

The man in the video goes unchallenged and says that present theories on viruses are all wrong, and recommends a video on YouTube that denies the existence of HIV to prove his point.

He doesn't at any point explain why people are getting ill.

Additional reporting by Flora Carmichael, Alma Hassoun, Marianna Spring, Olga Robinson, Reha Kansara, Shayan Sardarizadeh and Alistair Coleman.

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