A comprehensive study of vaccine safety has concluded, once again, that vaccines are ‘remarkably safe’.

Vaccines are considered one of the greatest achievements of modern public health, saving countless lives and all but eliminating once prevalent diseases such as mumps, measles and poliomyelitis.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder of what life is like with contagious infectious diseases without an effective vaccine.

However, vaccination hesitancy has reduced vaccination rates in recent years, and many outbreaks are now linked to intentional non-vaccination.

An international research team has looked at initial and subsequent labels of 57 vaccines that were FDA approved in the US over a period of 20 years, and aggregated hundreds of thousands of reports from the FDA’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

They found 58 post-approval, safety-related label modifications associated with 25 vaccines.

The most common safety issue triggering label modifications was restriction of vaccination for specific populations, such as immunocompromised patients or pre-term infants, followed by allergies.

The researchers say these findings support previous research that vaccines are safe, effective, and one of the most successful public health strategies we have.

The study is accessible here.