Vitamin Information Center

Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG)
Vaccination
Synonyms
Bacille Calmette-Guérin immunization; Vaccination
against tuberculosis (tbc); Immunization against tuberculosis
(tbc)
Definition
Immunization against Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG)
was developed in the 1930s, using a live, weakened
strain of Mycobacterium bovis, which is similar to the
germ causing tuberculosis in humans (Mycobacterium
tuberculosis).While tuberculosis is no problem in many
countries, and thus vaccination is not recommended
there, it is highly prevalent in other areas of the world.
In countries with high rates of tuberculosis, BCG vaccination
should preferably be performed at time of birth
as a single intradermal injection.After correct injection,
an induration of the skin and afterwards a small scar
develops at the needle site. The protection rate achieved
by BCG vaccination is 70–80%. In all individuals older
than six months, a tuberculin skin test (Mantoux test)
should be carried through prior to BCG immunization
to find out if the person has already come into contact
with tuberculosis. In this test a small amount of tuberculin
units is inoculated by an intradermal injection.
The induration has to be measured by a trained person
48–72 hours after administration, with a red lump
> 5mm meaning a positive result. Contraindications for
BCG vaccination are prior tuberculosis, acute illness
with fever, generalized skin disease and immunodeficiency.
 Immunization, Active

Decades ago, American children faced a dreaded daily routine to prevent rickets and promote overall health: swallowing cod liver oil.

“Before the 1930s, when milk began to be fortified with vitamin D in this country, it was very, very common that children would have been given cod liver oil as a source of vitamin D,” said Allen Knehans, professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
However, a report issued this month by 16 experts said cod liver oil is not a good source of vital vitamin D because the oil also includes toxic levels of vitamin A.

“Americans continue to consume multivitamins and/or cod liver oil containing disproportionately small amounts of vitamin D but detrimental quantities of vitamin A,” the experts said in the report in the Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology. The high level of vitamin A in cod liver oil “will mask the benefit of adequate vitamin D nutrition,” it said.

Knehans, who was not involved in creating the report, said vitamin A is “clearly toxic” and that high doses over a long period could result in blurred vision, stupor, even coma. “It can be pretty serious.”

The report lauded many apparent benefits of vitamin D, from reduction of influenza and respiratory infections to increased immunity and even prevention of cancer, diabetes and chronic diseases. It also warned of dangers of vitamin D deficiency, including autism, asthma and autoimmune diabetes.

Diet alone cannot solve the problem, the scientists said.

They also said many multivitamins contain far too much vitamin A and far too little vitamin D. They called on federal officials to boost the recommended levels of vitamin D, saying “current official guidelines and limitations for vitamin D intakes are scientifically indefensible.”

Federal guidelines urge people to have a daily vitamin D intake of 200 IU for infants to 600 IU for those 71 and older.

DR HUGH Butt, the Mayo Clinic physician who discovered the role of vitamin K in clotting and developed anti-clotting techniques that paved the way for open-heart surgery and transplants, has died after a fall at his home in Rochester, Minnesota, in the United States. He was 98.

He was a resident at Mayo in the 1930s when he learned that Danish nutritionist Henrik Dam, who received the 1943 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for the discovery of vitamin K, had shown that chickens deficient in the vitamin were susceptible to internal bleeding.

Butt suspected that an inability to absorb the vitamin properly was at the root of the hemorrhaging and confirmed this in chickens.

Soon after, he was confronted with a jaundiced patient who was bleeding to death internally. He administered vitamin K combined with bile salts to increase absorption and, within an hour, the bleeding had ceased.

It was “the first kind of miracle I had ever seen,” he later recalled.