Neonatal bacilli calmette-guerin vaccination and environmental mycobacteria in sensitizing antimycobacterial activity of macrophages.

Mathan, P.; Datta, M .; Kannapiran, M .; Ramanathan, V.D .; Venkatesan, P .

The American Journal of the Medical Sciences; 2014; 348; 57-64.

Abstract: An immunoepidemiological study was performed to evaluate the effect of neonatal Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination and tuberculin response on macrophage killing profile against Mycobacterium tuberculosis . In this epidemiological field work, the study subjects were drawn from in and around Chennai city, South India . The descriptive epidemiological pattern of neonatal BCG vaccination and its impact on tuberculin skin test were studied. The study subjects for the immunologic laboratory experiments were recruited based on the skin test (Mantoux) outcome and were grouped in to 4 natural study groups that include vaccinated reactors, vaccinated non-reactors, non-vaccinated reactors and non-vaccinated non-reactors. In immunologic laboratory work part, the elucidation of macrophage killing profile was studied for all the 4 groups, and appropriate intercomparisons were made. The parameters used for the macrophage killing profile were (1) glutathione assay, (2) measurement of phagocytosis, (3) intracellular growth kinetics of M. tuberculosis H37Rv, (4) tumor necrosis factor- a assay and (5) interferon- g assay. The results found that in the BCG-vaccinated tuberculin reactors the macrophage responses were significantly higher than the BCG-vaccinated tuberculin non-reactors. There was no significant difference in the responses among the BCG-vaccinated tuberculin reactors when compared with the non-vaccinated tuberculin reactors. The immune responses of non-vaccinated tuberculin reactors were significantly higher than the vaccinated tuberculin non-reactors. These findings show that the immune response among the adolescents/young adults is elicited by exposure to mycobacteria and not by the neonatal BCG vaccination.

Key Indexing Terms: Bacilli Calmette-Guerin vaccine; Glutathione; Interferon- g ; Macrophage; Mycobacterium tuberculosis; Tumor necrosis factor- a .

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