OBJECTIVE To test the safety and immunogenicity of two doses of autoclaved L. major (ALM) vaccine mixed with BCG. SETTING Kala-azar endemic area of eastern Sudan. DESIGN This was a randomised, double blind and BCG controlled phase I/II study. SUBJECTS Eighty healthy volunteers (forty children and forty adults) with no past history of kala-azar, no reactivity to leishmanin antigen and with...

Patients with high-grade Ta, T1, or carcinoma in situ non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) are at high risk for recurrence and, more importantly, progression. Thus, both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology recommend initial intravesical treatment with bacillus Calmette-Guerin(BCG) followed by maintenance therapy for a minimum of 1 year. The complete res...

Major research efforts are directed towards the development of a better antimycobacterial vaccine. But progress in the field of tuberculosis vaccine development has been hampered by the lack of human in vitro models to assess vaccine immunogenicity and efficacy. New candidate vaccines will have to be evaluated against the existing Mycobacterium bovis BCG "gold standard." It is therefore importa...

The aim of this study was to determine phenotypic differences when BCG invades macrophages. Bacilli prepared from the same BCG primary seed, but produced in different culture media, were analysed with respect to the ability to stimulate macrophages and the susceptibility to treatment with cytokines and nitric oxide (NO). Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) activity was assayed by measuring its cytotox...

Several lines of evidence have recently suggested that natural killer (NK) cells develop immunological memory against viral infections. However, there is no apparent evidence that NK cells acquire specific memory against Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), the only currently licensed vaccine for preventing tuberculosis. In the present study, we investigated whether murine spleni...

Adjuvant intravesical Bacillus Calmette-Guérìn (BCG) has proved to be an effective treatment for superficial bladder cancer. Intraluminal attachment of BCG organisms via binding to the extracellular matrix protein, fibronectin (FN), appears to be required for expression of the antitumor efficacy of BCG against a murine bladder tumor. Initial studies demonstrated that radiolabeled FN localized...

OBJECTIVES To determine whether intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) administration reduces recurrence after transurethral resection of superficial bladder cancer using a meta-analysis. METHODS Published data of randomized clinical trials comparing transurethral resection plus intravesical BCG to either resection alone or resection plus another treatment were analyzed, considering poss...

the only available vaccine against tuberculosis is bcg which has been found to protect children against disseminated tuberculosis and tuberculous meningitis. bcg is one of the safest vaccines being used, and osteitis is a rare complication of it. during a period of eight years, we had eleven cases of osteitis occuring in infants following bcg vaccination. eight cases were female. defect in immu...

Adjuvant intravesical Mycobacterium bovis BCG is the treatment of choice for recurrent superficial bladder cancer. Fibronectin (FN) was previously demonstrated to be necessary for the retention of BCG within the bladder and for the expression of antitumor activity. Recent studies have demonstrated that BCG attach and are ingested by bladder epithelial cells, suggesting the existence of a second...

Recombinant Mycobacterium bovis BCG expressing foreign antigens represents a promising candidate for the development of future vaccines and was shown in several experimental models to induce protective immunity against bacterial or parasitic infections. Innate resistance to BCG infection is under genetic control and could modify the immune responses induced against an antigen delivered by such ...