(CNN) — A vaccine to prevent coronavirus may be months or even years away, but a team of researchers in the United States say an everyday vaccine that is available now might be used to help prevent the worst effects of coronavirus infection.
They’re proposing giving a booster dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to people to see if it ramps up immunity in general, perhaps helping prevent some of the most severe effects of Covid-19.
“There is mounting evidence that live attenuated vaccines provide nonspecific protection against lethal infections unrelated to the target pathogen of the vaccine by inducing ‘trained’ nonspecific innate immune cells for improved host responses against subsequent infections,” Paul Fidel of Louisiana State University and Mairi Noverr of Tulane University wrote in a letter to the journal mBio.
One theory about why children and teens have much lower rates of coronavirus infection is that they have more recently received vaccines, including MMR, than adults have, and have some of the residual extra immune benefits.
Some vaccine experts are dubious about the theory that children are less vulnerable to coronavirus because of recent vaccinations.
