Type-1 diabetes can be controlled with help from this TB vaccine

Suffering from Type 1 diabetes? This tuberculosis vaccine may help to reduce high blood sugar, says a new study.

A vaccine used for treating tuberculosis (TB) may be effective in reducing high blood sugar among people with Type-1 diabetes, says a new study by the

Type-1 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produce little or no insulin. The findings show that, three years of receiving two administrations of the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine four weeks apart, people with longstanding Type-1 diabetes showed an improvement in overall sugar levels.

“This is clinical validation of the potential to stably lower blood sugar to near normal levels with a safe vaccine, even in patients with longstanding disease,” said Denise Faustman, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Immunobiology Laboratory.

The study, published in the journal npj Vaccine, also reported that the effects of BCG vaccine on blood sugar control appear to depend on a novel metabolic mechanism that increases cellular consumption of glucose. The team analysed data from 282 human study participants — 52 with Type-1 diabetes who participated in the BCG clinical trials and 230 who contributed blood samples for mechanistic studies.

The results showed that the HbA1c levels of those receiving BCG had dropped by more than 10% in three years after treatment and by more than 18% in four years.

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