ReviewActa bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis2020
Stop playing with data: there is no sound evidence that Bacille Calmette-Guérin may avoid SARS-CoV-2 infection (for now).
Review in Acta bio-medica : Atenei Parmensis, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effectiveness of Bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccination policies in reducing infection and mortality of COVID-19: a systematic review.Global health research and policy · 2022Pooled it
- Knowledge of SARS-CoV-2 Epitopes and Population HLA Types Is Important in the Design of COVID-19 Vaccines.Vaccines · 2022Review
- Why Does the Severity of COVID-19 Differ With Age?: Understanding the Mechanisms Underlying the Age Gradient in Outcome Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection.The Pediatric infectious disease journal · 2022Review
- COVID-19 and Beyond: Exploring Public Health Benefits from Non-Specific Effects of BCG Vaccination.Microorganisms · 2021Review
- Variances in BCG protection against COVID-19 mortality: A global assessment.Journal of clinical tuberculosis and other mycobacterial diseases · 2021Article
- Is the tuberculosis vaccine BCG an alternative weapon for developing countries to defeat COVID-19?The Indian journal of tuberculosis · 2021Article
- COVID-19 pandemic: SARS-CoV-2 specific vaccines and challenges, protection via BCG trained immunity, and clinical trials.Expert review of vaccines · 2021Review
- Harnessing the non-specific immunogenic effects of available vaccines to combat COVID-19.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2021Article
- Review of registered clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19.Drug development research · 2021Review
- Effects of Bariatric Surgery on COVID-19: a Multicentric Study from a High Incidence Area.Obesity surgery · 2021Article
- Article
- Association between live childhood vaccines and COVID-19 outcomes: a national-level analysis.Epidemiology and infection · 2021Article
- COVID-19 Infection and Previous BCG Vaccination Coverage in the Ecuadorian Population.Vaccines · 2021Article
- BCG vaccine: Worrying proposal for COVID-19.Vaccine · 2021Article
- COVID-19 Death and BCG Vaccination Programs Worldwide.Tuberculosis and respiratory diseases · 2021Article
- Can BCG be useful to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic? A Canadian perspective.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2020Article
- Bacille Calmette Guérin (BCG) and new TB vaccines: Specific, cross-mycobacterial and off-target effects.Paediatric respiratory reviews · 2020Review
- BCG vaccination early in life does not improve COVID-19 outcome of elderly populations, based on nationally reported data.Letters in applied microbiology · 2020Article
- Association between live childhood vaccines and COVID-19 outcomes: a national-level analysis.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, a possible explanation for the high heterogeneity of infection/mortality rates across involved countries was hinted in the prevalence of tuberculosis vaccination with Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG). A systematic review was therefore performed on May 2, 2020. A total of 13 articles were ultimately retrieved, 12 of them as preprint papers. All articles were ecological studies of low quality. Most of them did not include main confounding factors (i.e. demographic of the assessed countries, share of peo- ple residing in urban settings, etc.), and simply assessed the differences among incidence/mortality of COVID-19 with vaccination rates or by having vs. having not any vaccination policy for BCG. Even though all studies shared the very same information sources (i.e. international registries for BCG vaccination rates and open source data for COVID-19 epidemics), results were conflicting, with later studies apparently denying any true correlation between COVID-19 occurrence and BCG vaccination rates and/or policies. As a consequence, there is no sound evidence to recommend BCG vaccination for the prevention of COVID-19.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.