Born from the tenacity of two pasteurians, it will celebrate its first century in 2021. The BCG has changed the course of a disease that still ravages the world: tuberculosis. In the early 1980s, the vaccine had a second life against bladder cancer. Will he put on a new coat? This is the path followed by Dutch researchers against the coronavirus.
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Their goal: to boost the immune system through BCG. Fighting a virus with a vaccine directed against a bacterial disease, this is an unorthodox idea ... However, it is not new. When he introduced the vaccine to northern Sweden in the late 1920s, doctor Carl Näslund was surprised that vaccinated children died 2 to 3 times less than others. His hypothesis: BCG would have "non-specific effects". "These are positive side effects , " explains Professor Camille Locht, Inserm research director at the Institut Pasteur in Lille.
Epidemiological studies have
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