The first infant to survive a generalized BCG infection.

A 17-month-old boy who contracted a severe generalized BCG infection is reported. He was treated for 2 years with streptomycin, isoniazide and rifampicin and is now, at the age of 5 years, apparently cured. The boy had an unexplained discrepancy between humoral and cellular PPD reactivity for several years, but conventional immunological studies including plasma immunoglobulin levels, blast transformation as well as MLC reactivity were all normal. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first child reported who has survived a generalized BCG infection.