The Unintended Benefits Of Vaccines
For decades, scientists have observed an extraordinarily positive side effect among children who received the measles vaccine. Researchers are now finding that other vaccines confer added protections.
A new study shows that vaccination with a weakened strain of salmonella not only protects against typhoid fever but also seems to rev up the immune system to fight off other problems like influenza and yeast infection.
By chance, in an earlier study looking at how the typhoid oral vaccine affects the gut, researchers noticed that the vaccine also triggered a protective response against influenza. So they designed a new study of 16 adults, reported Feb., to look specifically at the broader, indirect effects of the vaccine on other infections. "This was the first time anyone looked at typhoid vaccine in this way," says of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who has a Ph.D. in infection and immunity and is an author of the new study.
