[Assessment of effectiveness of BCG vaccination against childhood tuberculosis]

We performed a retrospective analysis of the history of BCG vaccination of 367 childhood patients who were treated for active tuberculosis (TB) in our hospital from 1976 to 1994. Fifty-eight percent of 367 cases, 83.1% of cases under 5 years of age and 92% of tuberculous meningitis had not received BCG. To investigate the effectiveness of BCG vaccination against TB, we carried out case-control studies using 59 patients with TB and 118 controls without TB. The cases were patients treated for TB in our hospital from 1988 through Nov. 1994. Two controls were chosen for every case with matching for sex, age at admission, year of admission and place of residence. Based on whole 59 pairs, BCG vaccination was shown to have protective efficacy of 78% (95% confidence interval [CI], 57-89%). For 34 pairs of under 5 years of age, estimated efficacy was 92% (95%CI, 80-97%), for primary pulmonary disease (27 pairs) it was 92% (95%CI, 78-97%). For bacteriologically confirmed TB (27 pairs), it was 84% (95%CI, 58-94%), while for bacterilogically negative TB (32 pairs) 71% (95%CI, 27-89%). Our results indicate that BCG vaccination with multipuncture methold protected considerably against TB in infants including primary pulmonary TB.