Clinical trial finds live vaccinations safe for liver, kidney transplant recipients

Experts at Cincinnati Children’s and Children’s Hospital Colorado say findings could enable more at-risk children to be protected from measles, mumps, and chicken pox Live vaccinations provided to children who previously received liver or kidney transplants were found to be safe and prompted an immune response to guard against several life-threatening conditions, according to a new study published Oct. 12, 2023, in JAMA Network Open. The study, based on data from 18 organ transplant centers, was co-authored by Lara Danziger-Isakov, MD, MPH, interim director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children’s, and Amy Feldman, MD, MSCS, medical director of the Liver Transplant Program at Children’s Hospital Colorado. The results are important because the rates of measles, mumps and the varicella-zoster virus that causes chicken pox are rising nationally and internationally, leaving immunocompromised children at risk for life-threatening conditions, according to Danziger-Isakov, senior author of the study. “This shifts the paradigm of the...