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From Public Health England:

With single vaccines, children would need 6 separate injections:

  • 3 primary doses - 1 measles, 1 mumps, 1 rubella

  • 3 pre-school boosters

Each injection can be uncomfortable and the act of immunisation is sometimes distressing for children.

Single vaccines are less safe than MMR because they leave children vulnerable to dangerous diseases for longer. Giving 3 separate doses at spaced out intervals would mean that, after the first injection, the child still has no immunity to the other 2 diseases.

Given the benefits of combining the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines into a single MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine, why don't we see similar packaging more often? Why aren't other vaccines similarly combined?

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Barry Harrison
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  • Please re-tag and suggest improvements as appropriate. Thanks in advance! – Barry Harrison Apr 21 '19 at 04:23
  • @KateGregory Are you saying that it is actually a rarity for uncombined childhood vaccines? – Barry Harrison Apr 22 '19 at 09:27
  • @KateGregory To answer your specific question, I can think of some: Streptococcus pneumoniae, Chickenpox, Hepatitis A and B, Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type B), polio, rotavirus. Please correct me if any are wrong. – Barry Harrison Apr 22 '19 at 09:30
  • @KateGregory I've never heard of DPTP-Hib, so I am curious: How common is it? (It obviously exists, I did an internet search). Including polio was wrong, my bad. I will list the vaccines and the year of introduction. Could you maybe clarify what your point is? Would it be obvious by looking at years of introduction? Thanks! – Barry Harrison Apr 22 '19 at 21:44
  • @KateGregory OK thanks. How common is DPTP-Hib? – Barry Harrison Apr 22 '19 at 21:47
  • @KateGregory Got it – Barry Harrison Apr 22 '19 at 22:03
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    In the UK, the 6-in-1 vaccination is recommended for all babies at 8, 12 and 16 weeks. It provides immunisation for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hep B, HiB and polio, and thus constitutes a significant proportion of diseases that children are vaccinated against routinely. – Chris Apr 24 '19 at 21:29
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    @Chris Thanks for the link. Now I can see DPTP-Hib is common, just packaged with Hep B and given a different name. – Barry Harrison Apr 25 '19 at 00:08
  • @KateGregory I have looked at the introduction dates of all vaccines. It seems to agree with your theory. – Barry Harrison Apr 25 '19 at 00:10
  • you can answer your own question. It might be helpful to others. And we can clean up this comment thread: I'll delete my other ones now – Kate Gregory Apr 25 '19 at 00:11
  • @KateGregory I'm hesitant to answer my own question. It was your idea after all. By the way, why did you develop this theory? From somewhere else? Did some research? – Barry Harrison Apr 25 '19 at 00:12
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    answering your own questions is totally a thing. You've figured out the dates etc. As for how I knew it, I'm just familiar with the childhood vaccination schedule and knew roughly which ones have been introduced in the last 30 years or so and which existed before that. – Kate Gregory Apr 25 '19 at 00:13
  • @KateGregory Ah, OK, got it. I have much more limited experience with vaccines. – Barry Harrison Apr 25 '19 at 00:14
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    I'll consider writing my own answer tomorrow, so others can get a chance to do so. – Barry Harrison Apr 25 '19 at 00:14

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I work in a pediatric office, and we regularly administer combination vaccines to our patients. (Such as Pediarix, Pentacel, ProQuad, etc.) You can check out table 2 in this link to see all CDC approved combo vaccines in the U.S.

On a side note, the CDC does not even consider MMR (or DTaP for that matter as well) to be a combo shot as it is hard to find a vaccine for each individual component of those vaccines. (Source)

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