How do Vaccines Protect the Microbiome? Penn State Reports on Investigation

TrialSite has chronicled the rising interest in microbiome research, particularly since the onset of COVID-19. With the topic of vaccination high up on the research agenda, how does this procedure, vaccination against harmful pathogens, impact the collection of often beneficial microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi, that live on or within an animal or human host organism?&nbsp;After all, the microbiome can play an important role in a host's overall immune response. Scientists from Penn State and several other prominent research centers just completed a study investigating this matter. A novel vaccine against the deadly chytrid fungus in frogs can actually modify the composition of the microbiome in the subject, thus making the frogs more resilient to future exposure to the fungus. Is microbiome response an overlooked part of vaccine efficacy? 
Published recently in a special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, this study while not directly impacting human health, does raise the specter of microbiome response and a set of observations that could be applied to human vaccine research. The recent output was covered by Gail McCormick writing for Eberly College of Science, Penn State.