The total number of reported infections of SARS-CoV-2 or the coronavirus has crossed 50 million globally, and the number of cases keeps up to increase even after strict restrictions. With the coronavirus pandemic outbreak, the health sector has almost collapsed as they are not completely equipped to fight this unwelcome deadly virus.
However, a recently published story revealed that an existing vaccination carries the potential to protect against the severe symptoms of COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 infection. An inverse correlation has been found by the researchers of the study between the severity of COVID-19 symptoms among the patients already vaccinated with measles-mumps-rubella MMR II vaccine and the levels of mumps titers.
In early September, a research team hailing from the Medica Sur located in Mexico City published the data produced from their latest studies, demonstrating the MMR vaccine's role in lessening symptom severity of the coronavirus disease. This very precious finding proved to be extremely useful in the growth of the COVID-19 vaccine market.
The research paper published by the team described how the individuals already vaccinated with the MMR vaccine at the onset of the pandemic seemed to have less severe symptoms of the COVID-19 disease in comparison to the others.
For the study, 80 individuals were divided and allocated into two groups. One is a comparison group, which consisted of the individuals with no previous record of the MMR II vaccinations, and who would have gotten the MMR antibodies from sources like prior infections with rubella, mumps, or measles. Another one is the MMR II group that consisted of 50 individuals or subjects who had MMR antibodies extracted from the MMR II vaccine itself. The results from the study revealed that the severity of the coronavirus symptoms and the mumps titers were inversely correlated in the case of the MMR II group. On the other hand, no such correlation was observed in the case of the comparison group.
This study is known to be the first immunological study to analyze the relationship between the symptom severity of coronavirus and the MMR II vaccine. Still, scientists failed to provide complete evidence to support the hypothesis. Therefore, further research is required to prove the inverse correlation between the symptom severity of COVID-19 and the mumps titers. At the same time, it is believed that MMR II vaccines may help reduce the spread of infection, virus, as well as, symptom severity.