BCG Vaccine

Exploring history and development of diabetes applications for the BCG vaccine which has 100 Years of safe, worldwide use

The bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is one of the oldest vaccines in history and has been investigated as a potential treatment for type 1 diabetes by Dr. Denise Faustman and her team at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for over a decade. A new study published today in npj Vaccines describes the long-term outcomes of BCG administration to patients with type 1 diabetes. The study enrolled 282 individuals, 52 of whom received the vaccine. The average age of type 1 diabetes duration among the cohort was 19 years. The patients were followed for over eight years, and their A1c levels were evaluated. The study reports that patients with type 1 diabetes who received just two doses of the BCG vaccine, spaced four weeks apart, achieved markedly lower A1c levels compared to the control group. This result was observed three years after the vaccine administration and continued for the next five years […]

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Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, is the Director of the Immunobiology Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She was interviewed by Diabetes Daily about 9 years ago when she was about to begin human clinical trials based on the results from her successful mice-curing BCG vaccine. Mice are certainly cured from type 1 diabetes a lot these days, but in clinical trials, they are often given type 1 diabetes through an interventional chemical administration. It is notable that Dr. Faustman cured mice who had naturally occurring type 1 diabetes which is rooted in the autoimmune attack on the insulin-making beta cells. The BCG vaccine, or Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine, is about 100 years old and used around the world, though no longer in the United States, for the prevention of tuberculosis. It is being studied in various labs around the world due to its ability to spark the […]

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In patients with long-term type 1 diabetes, the tuberculosis vaccine BCG lowers blood sugar levels to near-normal after three years. Denise Faustman and her team from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School investigated a cohort of type 1 diabetics that received two doses of BCG before being monitored over eight years. After three years, vaccine-treated patients lowered their HbA1c levels—a diabetes biomarker reflecting average blood sugar over 8–12 weeks—by over 10%. This reduction increased to 18% in the fourth year, after which HbA1c levels remained low up to the final year of monitoring. The researchers report that the BCG vaccine appeared to reset diabetes-implicated parts of the immune system and, through a novel mechanism, shift glucose metabolism to lower blood sugar to healthy levels. Future studies will further classify BCG’s benefits in diabetes.

The bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is the only licensed vaccine for human use against tuberculosis (TB). Although controversy exists about its efficacy, the BCG vaccine is able to protect newborns and children against disseminated forms ...

The delivery route and dose of the BCG vaccine profoundly alters the protective outcome after Mycobacterium tuberculosis challenge in non-human primates.

Repeat BCG Vaccinations for the Treatment of Established Type 1 Diabetes - Full Text View.

It costs more than $1.7 million to prevent just one additional case of active tuberculosis in a health care worker. Experts say there's a better way.