Diabetes May Be Reversed by Long-Used Vaccine for TB

A tuberculosis vaccine in use for 90 years may help reverse Type 1 diabetes and eliminate the life-long need for insulin injections, say Harvard University researchers raising money to conduct large, human studies.

Patients with Type 1 diabetes must inject insulin daily to control their blood sugar because their bodies don’t produce the hormone, the result of an errant immune system that destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The vaccine, called bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG, stimulated production of a protein that killed the insulin-attacking cells, according to the findings of an early-stage study published yesterday in the journal PLOS One.