Abstract

*Reza V. Rafsanjani, Majid farhadi and omidyar E. O

The Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is used more than any other vaccines in the world, whereas a lot of studies have spoken about allergy and its relationship with the BCG vaccine. It is believed that many factors can influence this relationship and its symptoms, can be observed via the occurred scar following BCG vaccination. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between the levels of T helper 1 (INF-gamma) / T helper 2 (IL-4, IL-13) in children suffering from Asthma and the scar size of BCG in them. In this case-control study, 100 children who have got scar, 60 of them suffered from asthma and 40 did not suffer from it, were studied. Subjects with no BCG scar are excluded from the study. The Chi-square test revealed that the frequency of cases with scar size larger than 5 mm, is 43ï?¥ in Asthmatic patients and 70ï?¥ in control group that the observed difference was statistically significant (P = 0.01). T test also revealed that the average of INF-gamma is considerably lower in patients suffering from Asthma than the control group.(6.95 ± 3.83 (pg/ml) in asthmatic group compared with 10.75 ± 6.98 (pg/ml) in control group) (P = 0.001) whereas the average of IL-4 (30.90 ± 16.51 (pg/ml) in asthmatic group compared with 9.95 ± 7.44 (pg/ml) in control group) (p < 0.001) and IL-13 (48.85 ± 13.66 (pg/ml) in asthmatic group compared with 10.49 ± 12.44 (pg/ml) in control group) (p < 0.001) is higher. Therefore, it was demonstrated that the average of the proportion of INF-gamma/IL-13(0.3054 in asthmatic group compared with 1.9334 in control group) in patients suffering from asthma, is lower. The size of BCG scar in Asthmatic patients was, significantly, smaller than the control group. Moreover, the average of T helper 1 (INF-gamma) was lower and the average of T helper 2 (IL- 4, 13) was higher in asthmatic patients. Therefore, there is a correlation between the size of BCG scar and the levels of T helper 1 (INFgamma) and T helper 2 (IL- 4, 13) with asthma; thus, there could also be a correlation between the scar size of BCG, T helper 1 and 2.