ArticleScience advances2022
Neonatal BCG vaccination is associated with a long-term DNA methylation signature in circulating monocytes.
Article in Science advances, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Immune mechanisms mediating the heterologous effects of BCG vaccination: a systematic review.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Pooled it
- Effect of BCG Danish and oral polio vaccine on neonatal mortality in newborn babies weighing less than 2000 g in India: multicentre open label randomised controlled trial (BLOW2).BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Trial
- BCG-Induced DNA Methylation Changes Improve Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccine Immunity Without Decreasing the Risk for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection.Open forum infectious diseases · 2025Trial
- Randomized Trial of BCG Vaccine to Protect against Covid-19 in Health Care Workers.The New England journal of medicine · 2023Trial
- Impact of vaccine platform and BCG vaccination on antibody responses to COVID-19 vaccination.Frontiers in immunology · 2023Trial
- Maturation-Dependent Constraints in the Ability of Human Monocytes to Initiate Trained Immunity.MedComm · 2026Article
- Review
- Innate immunity: current understandings and future perspectives.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2026Review
- Trained Immunity Induced by Vaccines: A Shifting Paradigm for Infant and Adult Immunity.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Tissue context as a determinant of trained innate immunity: a conserved molecular toolkit with divergent functional outputs.Journal of leukocyte biology · 2026Review
- Trained Immunity and Cardiovascular Risk: An Immunological Perspective.Immunological reviews · 2026Review
- The long-term effect of metabolic bariatric surgery on innate immune cell phenotype and function.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2025Observational
- Memory in Misfire: The Gut Microbiome-Trained Immunity Circuit in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Pseudouridine reprogramming in the human T-cell epitranscriptome: from primary to immortalized states.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Rational adjuvant selection for the neonatal period shapes unique and lasting immune polarization in mice.NPJ vaccines · 2025Article
- Long-term DNA methylation changes mediate heterologous cytokine responses after BCG vaccination.Genome biology · 2025Article
- Trained immunity in chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2025Review
- Article
- Allergen-Specific Immunotherapy and Trained Immunity.Allergy · 2025Review
- Epigenetic remodeling by sex hormone receptors and implications for gender affirming hormone therapy.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Trained immunity describes the capacity of innate immune cells to develop heterologous memory in response to certain exogenous exposures. This phenomenon mediates, at least in part, the beneficial off-target effects of the BCG vaccine. Using an in vitro model of trained immunity, we show that BCG exposure induces a persistent change in active histone modifications, DNA methylation, transcription, and adenosine-to-inosine RNA modification in human monocytes. By profiling DNA methylation of circulating monocytes from infants in the MIS BAIR clinical trial, we identify a BCG-associated DNA methylation signature that persisted more than 12 months after neonatal BCG vaccination. Genes associated with this epigenetic signature are involved in viral response pathways, consistent with the reported off-target protection against viral infections in neonates, adults, and the elderly. Our findings indicate that the off-target effects of BCG in infants are accompanied by epigenetic remodeling of circulating monocytes that lasts more than 1 year.
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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.