In 1995, Finland was 9 years out from having implemented a 2 dose vaccination MMR protocol but apparently no one had studied how long those vaccine-induced antibodies lasted – seems kind of relevant doesn’t it?  The way vaccines work is that the second and subsequent doses give the immune system a boost in terms of antibody levels and in terms of how tightly the antibodies bind to the nasty lil thing your trying to eliminate (affinity maturation – a topic for later posts).

I was struck by these two figures (that I cut an paste together) from a Finnish study (1) on how long the mumps-specific antibodies generated by the vaccine lasted.  Lots of other stuff in this paper to comment on, but look at how giving 6 year olds the second dose of vaccine does NOT result in a boost, whereas it does for the kids vaccinated at a much younger age.  Is this a generalizable phenomena? I definitely sense a rabbit hole waiting for me

Waiting to vaccinate children is not a good idea?

References

(1) Davidkin et al 1995 Vaccine ” Persistence of anti-mumps virus antibodies after a two-dose MMR vaccination. A nine-year follow-up”