Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses

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dc.citation.articleNumber18377
dc.citation.journalTitleScientific Reports
dc.citation.volumeNumber10
dc.contributor.authorHensel, Janine
dc.contributor.authorMcAndrews, Kathleen M.
dc.contributor.authorMcGrail, Daniel J.
dc.contributor.authorDowlatshahi, Dara P.
dc.contributor.authorLeBleu, Valerie S.
dc.contributor.authorKalluri, Raghu
dc.date.accessioned2020-11-10T21:22:24Z
dc.date.available2020-11-10T21:22:24Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.description.abstractThe Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine provides protection against tuberculosis (TB), and is thought to provide protection against non-TB infectious diseases. BCG vaccination has recently been proposed as a strategy to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 (CoV-2) to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, supported by its potential to boost innate immunity and initial epidemiological analyses which observed reduced severity of COVID-19 in countries with universal BCG vaccination policies. Seventeen clinical trials are currently registered to inform on the benefits of BCG vaccinations upon exposure to CoV-2. Numerous epidemiological analyses showed a correlation between incidence of COVID-19 and BCG vaccination policies. These studies were not systematically corrected for confounding variables. We observed that after correction for confounding variables, most notably testing rates, there was no association between BCG vaccination policy and COVD-19 spread rate or percent mortality. Moreover, we found variables describing co-morbidities, including cardiovascular death rate and smoking prevalence, were significantly associated COVID-19 spread rate and percent mortality, respectively. While reporting biases may confound our observations, our epidemiological findings do not provide evidence to correlate overall BCG vaccination policy with the spread of CoV-2 and its associated mortality.
dc.identifier.citationHensel, Janine, McAndrews, Kathleen M., McGrail, Daniel J., et al.. "Protection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses." <i>Scientific Reports,</i> 10, (2020) Springer Nature: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75491-x.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75491-x
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/109546
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSpringer Nature
dc.rightsThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.titleProtection against SARS-CoV-2 by BCG vaccination is not supported by epidemiological analyses
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.publicationpublisher version
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