Pediatric allergy and immunology : official publication of the European Society of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology
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Pediatr Allergy Immunol · Jun 2012
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyTuberculosis, bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccination, and allergic disease: findings from the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood Phase Two.
Some have suggested a protective effect of tuberculosis (TB) infection on allergic disease risk, but few studies have examined the association between the two. We therefore investigated whether TB disease and bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination in early life protect against allergic disease. Information on allergic disease symptoms, past TB disease, and BCG vaccination as well as potential confounding factors was gathered by parental questionnaire from a randomly selected subset of 23,901 8- to 12-yr-old schoolchildren in 20 centers in both developed and developing countries. ⋯ BCG vaccination during the first year of life was also not associated with any of the allergy outcomes. We found a uniform positive association between TB and all allergic disease outcomes, including eczema on skin examination. As this was a cross-sectional study, it is unclear whether this positive association is attributable to a causal relationship, and further longitudinal studies are required.