How would the tuberculosis vaccine (BCG) decrease severity of COVID-19?
Two academic hospitals in The Netherlands (Nijmegen and Utrecht) just got approval to experiment with using a tuberculosis vaccine (BCG) to try to better protect hospital workers against coronavirus.
I assume that "protect hospital workers" means something like decreasing the severity of the infection.
Apparently the BCG vaccine is known to stimulate the immune system. Given that information, how exactly will it "protect hospital workers"? With or without BCG vaccine, the immune system does not yet have the antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 (2019-nCoV) coronavirus. So, will the immune system, after BCG vaccination, create more or better antibodies or generate them faster?
www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/03/will-tb-vaccine-help-healthcare-workers-fight-corona-dutch-hospitals-experiment/
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BCG vaccination appears to enhance the humoral response to general infection. There is said to be also enhanced response so therefore protection against influenza. The trial above is to see if it helps with a response against sars-cov-2.
There is some evidence that BCG vaccination enhances the humoral immune response to other unrelated childhood vaccinations, essentially acting as an adjuvant. Ota et al. reported that infants vaccinated at birth with BCG had, upon vaccination against hepatitis, significantly higher levels of IgG against hepatitis B vaccine antigens. Furthermore, BCG vaccination given at the time of oral polio vaccine boosting improved the antibody response to polio, indicating an effect of BCG at the systemic level (154). An Australian study of 56 BCG-vaccinated and 52 non-BCG vaccinated infants found that BCG vaccination was associated with significantly higher IgG titers against pneumococcal capsular polysaccharide antigens, H.influenzae type b polysaccharide and tetanus toxoid following routine immunisations later in infancy
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6579862/
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