Effect of an Early Dose of Measles Vaccine on Morbidity Between 18 Weeks and 9 Months of Age: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Guinea-Bissau.

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J Infect Dis. 2017 Jan 10. pii: jiw512. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiw512. [Epub ahead of print]

Effect of an Early Dose of Measles Vaccine on Morbidity Between 18 Weeks and 9 Months of Age: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Guinea-Bissau.

Do VA¹² Biering-Sørensen S¹² Fisker AB¹² Balé C² Rasmussen SM¹² Christensen LD¹² Jensen KJ¹³ Martins C² Aaby P² Benn CS¹⁴.

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Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Children in Guinea-Bissau receive measles vaccine (MV) at 9 months of age but studies have shown that an additional dose before 9 months of age might have beneficial nonspecific effects. Within a randomized trial designed to examine nonspecific effects of early MV receipt on mortality we conducted a substudy to investigate the effect of early MV receipt on morbidity.

METHODS:

Children were randomly assigned at a ratio of 2:1 to receive 2 doses of MV at 18 weeks and age 9 months (intervention group) or 1 dose of MV at age 9 months in accordance with current practice (control group). Children were visited weekly from enrollment to age 9 months; the mother reported morbidity and the field assistants examined the children. Using Cox and binomial regression models we compared the 2 randomization groups.

RESULTS:

Among the 1592 children early measles vaccination was not associated with a higher risk of the well-known adverse events of fever rash and convulsions within the first 14 days. From 15 days after randomization to age 9 months early measles vaccination was associated with reductions in maternally reported diarrhea (hazard ratio [HR] 0.89; 95% confidence interval [CI] .82-.97) vomiting (HR 0.86; 95% CI .75-.98) and fever (HR 0.93; 95% CI .87-1.00).

CONCLUSION:

Early MV receipt was associated with reduced general morbidity in the following months supporting that early MV receipt may improve the general health of children.