Vaccines to prevent corona virus may take months or even years, but research teams in the US say the daily vaccines available now can be used to help prevent the worst effects of coronavirus infections.
They proposed giving people booster doses of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines to see if vaccines improve immunity in general, perhaps helping to prevent some of the most severe effects of Covid-19.
Their thoughts: The MMR vaccine is known to protect children from infections that go far beyond the three viruses targeted by the vaccine. The theory is that vaccines enhance general immunity, in addition to training the body to recognize certain viruses.
The MMR vaccine is what is known as a live vaccine. It uses a very weak, or weakened, version of measles, mumps and rubella virus to produce immune protection without making people sick. Because it uses all viruses, it stimulates a broad immune response and goes beyond antibody production.
“There is plenty of evidence to show that live-attenuated vaccines provide unspecified protection against deadly infections that are not related to vaccine target pathogens by inducing non-specific innate immune cells that are trained for better host response to subsequent infections,” Paul Fidel of Louisiana State University and Mairi Noverr Tulane University wrote in a letter to the journal mBio.
“A clinical trial with MMR in a high-risk population can provide a ‘low risk – high reward’ precautionary measure in saving lives during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic,” they wrote. There is no serious risk to giving vaccines to most people and this approach might be very effective at protecting health workers, they said.
“If we are wrong, yes, at least people will have new antibodies for measles, mumps and rubella. So there is no harm, there is no violation,” Fidel told CNN.
“We emphasize that this is a precautionary measure against the worst sequel of COVID-19 inflammation for those who are exposed / infected and do not represent antiviral therapy or vaccines against COVID-19 in any way,” Fidel and Noverr added in their letter.
