A proposal to evaluate efficacy of the Bacillus Calmette Guerin (BCG) vaccine as an immune booster with Covid vaccine Covaxin is being reviewed by the national Covid taskforce, reports said, adding that this is being done with a plan to possibly carry out an open label randomised controlled trial to determine if it reduces incidence or severity of the disease.
The trial was discussed during a meeting and is based on past signs that the BCG vaccine may offer some benefit in fighting Covid, a hindustantimes.com report said.
“The proposal was floated in one of the task force meetings this year. There have been studies that found BCG showing some promise against Covid-19 among elderly. The fresh proposal was meant to see how well it works as a booster in those who have taken Covaxin as their primary dose,” a members of the task force familiar to the development was quoted as saying.
BCG vaccine stimulates body’s immune system to provide protection against tuberculosis and has been administered to newborns as part of Centre’s National Immunization Programme for the least 50 years.
BCG was developed as an attenuated (weakened live bacteria) live vaccine for tuberculosis. The vaccine is also known to protect against heterologous – or more than one – infection of the pathogen it is designed against.
There have been two trials in India with BCG: 1) To evaluate efficacy of BCG in reducing the incidence and severity of Covid in the high-risk population, and 2) to evaluate the effectiveness of BCG vaccine in reducing morbidity and mortality in the elderly individuals Covid hotspots.
These studies are being led by the The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
A paper based on results of the second study concerned with efficacy of the BCG vaccine on elderly population was also published by the ICMR in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. The study showed that BCG could improve the response to vaccines directed against viral infections most likely by protecting against unrelated infections.
This, as per the paper, was because it seemed to play a key role in stimulating a kind of immune cell known as dendritic cells.
“We investigated the impact of BCG vaccination on the frequencies of dendritic cell (DC) subsets and type I and III interferons (IFNs) using whole blood and plasma samples in a group of elderly individuals (age 60-80 years) at one-month post-vaccination as part of our clinical study to examine the effect of BCG on COVID-19…. BCG vaccination was associated with enhanced DC subsets and IL-28A/IL-29 in elderly individuals, suggesting its ability to induce non-specific innate immune responses,” the HT report quoted lines from the paper.
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