A single injection of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) could boost the immunity of children already vaccinated with multiple doses of live oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV), new research suggests.
A combination of the two vaccine types in routine immunisation programmes could help achieve global eradication of poliovirus, the researchers say. OPVs are cheaper and easier to administer but the intestinal immunity they provide against the virus weakens after a while. Children vaccinated with OPV can still spread the virus through faeces.
An international team of researchers has now tested the efficacy of IPV in boosting intestinal immunity of OPV-vaccinated children. In clinical trials conducted in the Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh, they tested stool samples of nearly a thousand infants and children vaccinated multiple times with OPV. The children were divided into random groups and given either bivalent OPV (bOPV), containing type 1 and type 3 polioviruses, or IPV. A third group (the control) was not given any vaccine.
Read more here at Nature India.
Photo credit: PIB (thumbnail)