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).
Unlabelled: In low-income countries early measles vaccine (MV) is associated with reduced child mortality which cannot be explained by prevention of measles. A large thymus gland in infancy is also associated with reduced mortality. We hypothesized that early MV is associated with increased thymic size.
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