Husna, Amity University Kolkata
An autoimmune disease is a condition in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the healthy cells of the body. Children with autoimmune diseases often require treatment with immunosuppressive drugs. So, in these patients, the efficacy and safety of vaccination, particularly the live attenuated vaccines remain a concern.
As the live attenuated vaccines contain the weakened live virus which has the potential to revert to a pathogenic form and cause disease, Therefore, the safety and immunogenicity of live attenuated vaccines is a potential concern, particularly in immunosuppressed children. The inactivated vaccine doesn’t contain the live virus so it can’t cause vaccine-associated infections in the immune-compromised pediatric population.
A review was performed using PubMed by a team from the University of Manchester and a total of 37 original articles were identified of which 25 studied the inactivated viral vaccines and 12 studied live-attenuated viral vaccines. Inactivated vaccines like Influenza vaccines, Hepatitis A vaccine, Hepatitis B vaccine, HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine, and live-attenuated vaccines like MMR (Measles Mumps and Rubella) vaccine, VZV (Varicella Zoster Virus) vaccines were found to be safe in the paediatric population treated with immunosuppressant for autoimmune disease.
The protection provided by these vaccines was adequate but there was a lower concentration of antibodies in patients taking immunosuppressants. So, the team recommended these patients get booster doses of vaccine in the future to ensure that protection is maintained. However, this is still an understudied area so further research needs to be done to ensure the safety and immunogenicity of various other vaccines in the immunocompromised population.
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Source: Hiu Nam Tse et al. Immune Response and Safety of Viral Vaccines in Children with Autoimmune Diseases on Immune Modulatory Drug Therapy, Expert Review of Vaccines (2021). DOI: 10.1080/14760584.2021.1875825
Interesting topic & great article! Keep writing more Husna😍😍
Good effort husna….Keep it up👍