Good old BCG - what a century-old vaccine can contribute to modern medicine.

M Lerm,C Locht

doi:10.1111/joim.13195

Abstract

Good old BCG - what a century-old vaccine can contribute to modern medicine.

Highlights

The never-fading interest in Bacillus Calmette–Guerin (BCG) is reflected in PubMed-listed citations emerging from the simple search ‘BCG’ revealing an accelerating ‘doublingrate’ from 220 in 1950 to 400 around the millennial turn to 800 articles in 2020
The full potential of BCG is only recently being systematically explored, including the possibility that BCG may have a protective effect on coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) [3], which was not heard of at the time of the conference
The Lille BCG conference inspired us to prepare a special issue for Journal of Internal Medicine by asking some of the speakers at the conference for contributions

Summary

Introduction

The never-fading interest in BCG is reflected in PubMed-listed citations emerging from the simple search ‘BCG’ revealing an accelerating ‘doublingrate’ from 220 in 1950 to 400 around the millennial turn to 800 articles in 2020. This initially unexpected width of beneficial effects that BCG has unveiled over the years has led to major new discoveries and resulted in treatments against a wide variety of human diseases beyond tuberculosis and leprosy and ranging from cancer to diabetes. The full potential of BCG is only recently being systematically explored, including the possibility that BCG may have a protective effect on coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) [3], which was not heard of at the time of the conference.

Results

Conclusion