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BCG vaccine for infections/autoimmune

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Posted 1/4/2023 5:05 PM (GMT 0)
Many of us had the BCG as kids, but seems like it's being used with some success in autoimmune and chronic infection.

The benefits seem to be two-fold. Firstly, it appears to be able to increase T-Regs, which are wildly important for calming the immune response. I read a study where they showed how BCG vaccination literally demethylated (turned on) the FOXP3 gene (one of the main genes responsible for t-reg activity). Also kind of cool to see how epigenetics works.

There seems to be some proof that it works in various autoimmune diseases.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bcg-tb-vaccine-diseases-diabetes-multiple-sclerosis

Also, the vaccine seems to strengthen the innate immune system, what they call "trained immunity", to more easily detect pathogens. Supposedly can help the body get rid of various bacterial and non-bacterial pathogens, such as viruses and candida:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0264410x21004084
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1202870109


Most of us may have had it as a new-born, but I've heard of people being re-innoculated in adult life (I believe its 3 shots over the course of 1 year) to help w/ chronic disease.

I'm too chicken given my unstable immune system, seems like a risk if you have mulitple autoimmune issues, but interesting none-the-less. Thought i'd share
Posted 1/4/2023 6:25 PM (GMT 0)
Wow! Very interesting indeed.

I read the articles. The only thing that gave me pause was this statement in the first article: “There are at least a dozen strains of the BCG organism used for vaccines, and scientists have learned that different strains have different effects on the immune system.”

The article doesn’t indicate the strains or which effects each had.

Looking forward to hearing what others have to say about this.
Posted 1/4/2023 7:58 PM (GMT 0)
that is an interesting one

i wasn't surprised that i might help type 1 diabetes people who were recently diagnosed - as their pancreas would be expected to be mostly intact - not yet damaged too much by the autoimmunity

but the fact that it could help adulates who had had T1D for many years is crazy - given that conventional wisdom is that pancreatic islet cells do not grow back ....

the T-Regs are interesting cells and i am sure are involved in diseases like lyme - and any other chronic infection - as they all tend to trigger auto-immune reactions of some sort - so a way if increasing them and their function might well benefit us - good find dcd

i am interested in the area of vaccines - and particularly autovaccines - ref the post i made a while ago on evidence building that CFS/ME may be caused by a biofilm infection in the kidney - and vaccines appear to be effective ( jury is still out - but people are being treated with this approach and reporting improvements anecdotally)

since there are a lot of symptoms cross over between CFS / ME and chronic lyme ( almost complete ) i suspect some common aetiology is at work - and we could learn something from this direction too
Posted 1/4/2023 8:21 PM (GMT 0)

Garzie said...
that is an interesting one

i wasn't surprised that i might help type 1 diabetes people who were recently diagnosed - as their pancreas would be expected to be mostly intact - not yet damaged too much by the autoimmunity

but the fact that it could help adulates who had had T1D for many years is crazy - given that conventional wisdom is that pancreatic islet cells do not grow back ....

the T-Regs are interesting cells and i am sure are involved in diseases like lyme - and any other chronic infection - as they all tend to trigger auto-immune reactions of some sort - so a way if increasing them and their function might well benefit us - good find dcd

i am interested in the area of vaccines - and particularly autovaccines - ref the post i made a while ago on evidence building that CFS/ME may be caused by a biofilm infection in the kidney - and vaccines appear to be effective ( jury is still out - but people are being treated with this approach and reporting improvements anecdotally)

since there are a lot of symptoms cross over between CFS / ME and chronic lyme ( almost complete ) i suspect some common aetiology is at work - and we could learn something from this direction too

Yup, i was quite surprised by the fact that it seemed to work in mature T1D cases as well.

My friend who tried the BCG vaccine actually has ME/CFS. He claims he's already feeling significantly better, and has only done 2 of the shots so far. My understanding is it will take a long time to feel the full effects, so I'm curious to see how his experiment turns out.
Posted 1/4/2023 8:50 PM (GMT 0)
Interesting.

Here in Canada the BCG vax wasn’t one that we got as children.

I do remember having the TB scratch test when I was hired at our health authority in 2008.
Posted 1/4/2023 8:59 PM (GMT 0)
Im so terrible with accronems i cant even spell it lol.

BCG ????

Dr google says its for tuberculosis. Hmm. Makes sense for the older ones here who were kids in the 60/s early 70s (me included) , Im not sure I had that vax as a kid though. (?)

Post Edited (astroman) : 1/4/2023 1:37:22 PM (GMT-8)

Posted 1/4/2023 9:48 PM (GMT 0)
This is our vax schedule.

https://immunizebc.ca/sites/default/files/docs/vaccine-schedule-infants-children-2022-v01.pdf
Posted 1/4/2023 10:05 PM (GMT 0)
i think in the UK routine vaccination of children with it it was phased out in 2005 - and replaced with targeted vaccine for infants

i think i had it at school when i was around 11 - seem to recall its the one that gives you a dead arm for a day or so?
Posted 1/4/2023 10:44 PM (GMT 0)
Study on the demethylation of Treg signature genes post vaccine (takes 3y to have full effect):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc8298580/

One thing I took from this paper was how real epiginetics is. You always hear about epigenetics more from a theoretical standpoint i.e. that lifestyle can affect the way your genes are expressed. Was interesting to see that it's very real and can be quantified and measured.

Interesting quote:

"Although BCG was originally developed as a vaccine for tuberculosis prevention, current clinical trials are using BCG therapy across a broad array of human disease. Not only are there advanced clinical trials with BCG in autoimmune diabetes, but there are also Phase III clinical trials in multiple sclerosis and early stage trial in allergies6–15. Epidemiology data also suggests that the unwanted inflammation of Alzheimer’s disease may be responsive to BCG vaccination in adulthood; clinical trials have just begun32. Trials using BCG vaccines to lessen the impact of COVID-19 on mortality and morbidity are also underway (clinicaltrial.gov). These ongoing infectious disease trials are based on nearly 10 years of clinical trial data showing BCG not only boosts immune resistance to tuberculosis but also boosts immunity to unrelated infections such as viral respiratory infections, parasites, yellow fever and malaria33–38"


My main concern w/ taking it is that vaccines can induce reactive arthritis, and since I already have some form of spondyloarthopathy, could potentially aggravate it. But the long run benefit of increased t-regs could potenitally outweight that.
Posted 1/5/2023 4:14 PM (GMT 0)
Not sure if you can get it in the US.

https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/prevention/bcg.htm

Is there a way to order the vaccines?

Post Edited (WalkingbyFaith) : 1/5/2023 8:23:00 AM (GMT-8)

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