Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have identified a potential mechanism by which tobacco smoking drives a type of white blood cell known as monocytes to the lung where they can increase the risk of active tuberculosis (TB).

BOSTON, 15 August 2022 – Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), published a new paper in Cell Reports Medicine demonstrating the protective potential of multiple doses of the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

Key Takeaways

Screening all hospitalized patients with HIV for tuberculosis (TB) using urine tests would improve life expectancy and be cost-effective in Malawi and South Africa. These findings from an international team of investigators have been published in The Lancet Global Health and could influence international guidelines on TB testing.

Long-term follow-up of participants in clinical trials of a generic vaccine to reverse advanced type 1 diabetes finds significant clinical benefits, including restoration of near-normal blood sugar levels. Three years after receiving two administrations of the bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine four weeks apart, all members of a group of adults with longstanding type 1 diabetes showed an improvement in HbA1c to near normal levels – improvement that persisted for the following five years. The study from a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team – published in npj Vaccines – also reports that the effects of BCG vaccine on blood sugar control appear to depend on a totally novel metabolic mechanism that increases cellular consumption of glucose.

07/Jun/2015 - A phase II clinical trial testing the ability of the generic vaccine bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) to reverse advanced type 1 diabetes has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The approval of this trial, which will shortly begin enrolling qualified patients, was announced today at the 75th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) by Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Immunobiology Laboratory and principal investigator of the study.

Use of the same antiangiogenesis drugs that have improved treatment of some cancers could also help surmount persistent difficulties in treating tuberculosis (TB). In their PNAS Early Edition report, investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) show that blood vessels supplying pulmonary granulomas – dense masses of immune cells that surround pockets of the TB bacteria in the lungs of infected patients – have the same sort of structural and functional abnormalities seen in solid tumors and that treatment with the antiangiogenesis drug bevacizumab (Avastin) significantly improved delivery of a small-molecule drug surrogate within granulomas in an animal model. 

A handheld diagnostic device that Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators first developed to diagnose cancer has been adapted to rapidly diagnose tuberculosis and other important infectious bacteria.