You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Correspondence
Author's response: BCG and infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis
  1. S W Michelsen1,
  2. E M Agger2,
  3. S T Hoff2,
  4. B Soborg1,
  5. L Carstensen1,
  6. A Koch1,
  7. T Lillebaek3,
  8. H C F Sorensen4,
  9. J Wohlfahrt1,
  10. M Melbye1
  1. 1 Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen S, Denmark
  2. 2 Department of Infectious Disease Immunology, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen S, Denmark
  3. 3 International Reference Laboratory of Mycobacteriology, Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen S, Denmark
  4. 4 The Tasiilaq District Hospital, Tasiilaq, Greenland
  1. Correspondence to Dr Sascha Wilk Michelsen, Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut, Artillerivej 5, Copenhagen S DK-2300, Denmark; swm{at}ssi.dk.

https://doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2014-206258

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Thanks to Turner et al for commenting on our article. Turner et al challenge our finding that the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine (BCG) can prevent Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection (MTI), and propose an alternative explanation: that the absence of a positive interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) could be due to antigenic sin and does not necessarily demonstrate absence of infection.

    A positive IGRA is the best available surrogate for MTI, but we are fully aware of its limitations. With the IGRA test, MTI is defined by a T-cell-induced interferon gamma response to M tuberculosis antigens …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors SWM drafted the manuscript. EMA, STH, BS, MM, JW, LC, AK, TL and HCFS advised on the content. All authors approved the final version. SWM is the guarantor of the manuscript.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Ethics approval Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

    Linked Articles