OPV protects against infectious disease mortality

Oral polio vaccine given at birth to children in resource-limited countries is safe and also may be protective against other deadly infectious diseases, according to a recent study. “Routine vaccines may have nonspecific effects on mortality,” Najaaraq Lund, MD, PhD, of the department of pediatrics at Kolding Hospital, Denmark, and colleagues wrote in Clinical Infectious Disease. “Administration of oral polio vaccine-at-birth, particularly in the first days of life and in the absence of oral polio vaccine campaigns, may have a marked beneficial impact on infant survival.” The researchers studied a cohort of 6,961 newborn children from Guinea-Bissau during a 12-month period. To determine the associations between mortality and oral polio vaccine (OPV) at birth, researchers divided the cohort into two groups: a variable group who only received bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine at birth (n = 3,467), and controls who received bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine and OPV at birth (n = 3,494). Study results showed that...