BCG vs COVID19

• 31 Mar 2021 06:17:46 PM
• |General Urology

Dear All,

We are travelling with SARS CoV2 for over a year now and some respite still elusive. Many have lost their life to this Infection globally. But interestingly, the advanced world countries are having more fatality than Underdeveloped Countries and Developing Countries.

Ashish Kamat was among the first in the world to suggest that BCG could be protective against COVI19 and its severity. He along with Paul Hegarty suggested that ‘BCG Vaccination may be Protective against COVID19’ even at the beginning of the Pandemic but it fell on relatively deaf ears over the ensuing months (PDF provided).

Elsayed Desouky (2021) addressed this issue of ‘BCG vs COVID19 and its Impact on Urology’ which is worth a read.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7229701/pdf/345_2020_Article_3251.pdf

Héctor Gallegos, Ignacio F. San Francisco* et al (2021) published on ‘Protective role of intravesical BCG in COVID-19 severity’. It would be worthwhile if some of us could look at this aspect as whether how many who had Intravesical therapy for NMIBC developed COVID19.

https://bmcurol.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12894-021-00823-6.pdf

The article from Prasanta Raghab Mohapatra* et al (2021) on ‘BCG Vaccination Induced Protection from COVID19’ is the most useful as regards we Indians are concerned.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7413058/pdf/main.pdf

This article addresses the Indian Scenario of COVID19 and how as a developing nation we are able to tackle it. It appears that BCG given to all Indians (that is the claim) born post 1948 may have a leading role in lessened mortality when compared to developed countries where use of BCG is not common.

I am sure these articles provided will give valuable information regarding COVID 19 and lessening the severity.

With warm Regards,

Venu

Comments(3)

• 

  Dr. Roy Chally

  02 Apr 2021 07:52:59 PM

       This is an interesting observation that people who had intravesical instillation of BCG had less severe manifestations with covid. Here the sample size (45) is not adequate to draw definite conclusions.

       Immune response is stimulated with BCG instillation. For bladder cancer the effectiveness has a definite period. One dose of IM BCG in infancy is not protective for getting tuberculosis in lifetime. Is there any evidence that this is protective against any common viral infections in the community?  Now to claim that BCG IM can be protective only in covid infection is dubious.
  

      

• 

  Venugopal P

  07 Apr 2021 07:24:15 AM

  Dear All,

  On the subject on ‘BCG and COVID’, I had requested our Pulmonologist at KMC, Mangalore Dr. Vishak to give us an understanding on the usefulness of BCG for COVID. I have to thank him on behalf of Uroacademy for placing the facts as is evident today. I am sure this brief write up by Vishak will unravel many of the confounding issues on the subject

  With warm regards,

  Venu

  View Document

• 

  Nitesh Jain

  08 May 2021 07:31:28 AM

  This statement may not hold true with such a rampant progression of disease in this part of the world where almost all are BCG Vaccinated