Potential vagus nerve-related adverse events in rotavirus vaccination

Vagus nerve-related adverse events (AEs) can be triggered by gastrointestinal infections. This raises the question of whether AE data from live-attenuated virus vaccination can be leveraged to investigate potential vagus nerve involvement. In this study, data from the Vaccine AEs Reporting System were retrospectively analyzed for candidate vagus nerve-related AEs in infants aged 0 and 1. Live-attenuated rotavirus vaccinations were associated with elevated normalized frequencies across all 16 selected vagus nerve-related AEs in both age groups, with the majority showing higher normalized frequencies in infants aged 0 than in those aged 1. These findings suggest that oral, live-attenuated virus vaccination may provide valuable insights into vagus nerve-related AEs. Furthermore, the higher normalized frequencies of AEs observed in infants aged 0 could indicate that the administered dose or minimum infectious units may be excessive for a subset of younger infants.