NEW PAPER OUT. We investigated the effect of rabies vaccine on the mortality of Danish pigs. Why did we do that - Danish pigs do not get rabies?
Here follows an explanation and the results of the study. #NSEvac sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Here follows an explanation and the results of the study. #NSEvac sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Our group has found that many child vaccines have important non-specific effects #NSEvac, affecting the risk of other infections. Live vaccines have beneficial #NSEvac. Non-live vaccines, in contrast, have been observed to have harmful #NSEvac in females. thelancet.com/journals/lanin…
In 2016, analysing data from a trial of a new non-live malaria vaccine (RTS,S), we found that girls had 2-fold higher all-cause mortality if they received RTS,S vs. a control vaccine. The RTS,S group also had more cerebral malaria and meningitis. mbio.asm.org/content/7/2/e0…
Some argued that RTS,S might not have negative effects. One of the age groups studied got rabies vaccine as control vaccine. The researchers proposed that rabies vaccine has beneficial #NSEvac that would make the RTS,S vaccine look bad in comparison. linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S…
Subsequently, however, the researchers conducted a randomised trial of non-live rabies vaccine in dogs. Corroborating that non-live vaccines may be harmful for females, they found that rabies vaccine was associated with 3-fold higher mortality in females. mdpi.com/2414-6366/5/1/…
In the meantime, we set out to study the effect of rabies vaccine in Danish pigs. We are interested in the effect of maternal priming, so we randomised both 575 sows and their 5747 offspring to rabies vaccine or no rabies vaccine and followed for mortality and use of antibiotics.
We found significant interaction between maternal and offspring vaccination and sex: In offspring of unvaccinated sows, rabies vaccine was associated with benefits in females but harm in males. In vaccinated sows, the effect was negative in both sexes, most so in females. 
Our results contradict the hypothesis that non-live rabies vaccine has beneficial #NSEvac. The study indicated #NSEvac, with effect modification by sex and maternal vaccination. It is thus another piece of evidence supporting that vaccines have important non-specific effects.
Final words: It does not seem likely that beneficial #NSEvac of rabies vaccine explain the observed 2-fold higher mortality in girls after RTS,S malaria vaccine. The roll-out of RTS,S vaccine to 720,000 children in Africa remains a great concern. bmj.com/content/368/bm…
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