Researchers from the University of Turku and the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology investigated the role of grandmothers in preventing childhood mortality from infectious diseases in 18th and 19th century Finland. According to the study, grandmothers decreased all-cause and cause-specific mortality of children.
A new nasal pertussis vaccine against whooping cough has shown promising results. The vaccine was shown to be safe and to work against whooping cough in a study conducted in healthy adults. Professor Qiushui He and Project Researcher Alex-Mikael Barkoff from the InFLAMES research flagship of the University of Turku participated in the study. The research article was published in the esteemed medical journal Lancet.
A new Finnish study shows that 180 health care workers who had received two doses of the Pfizer and Biontech vaccine have very good antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The immune response was as strong against the alpha variant (formerly the UK variant) but was somewhat decreased against the beta variant (formerly the South Africa variant).
Although vaccination programmes against pertussis are very effective in Europe, new Finnish study shows that the disease is still very common among middle-aged adults in various European countries. At the same time, the results show that the disease is underdiagnosed as the annually reported figures are considerably lower than those discovered in the study.
Vaccine hesitancy was recognised as a serious threat by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019. Now, international experts are joining forces to combat vaccine hesitancy by tackling its root cause – misinformation. With EU funding, the project will harness the potential of health care professionals to challenge misconceptions about vaccination, reinforce confidence in vaccines, and encourage uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine, including being immunised themselves.
A research group at the University of Turku has led the development of a new method to evaluate vaccine safety. The new method may significantly reduce the use of animal testing in the vaccine industry.
A new study shows that individuals who react negatively to rules and recommendations and have lower trust in doctors more often use complementary and alternative medicine, that is, treatments or substances that are not included in the care offered or recommended by doctors. The study included altogether 770 parents of young children.