Document Type

Journal Article

Publisher

PLOS

Faculty

Faculty of Computing, Health and Science

School

School of Medical Sciences

RAS ID

15867

Comments

Wang, Y., Wu, L., Yu, X., Zhao, F., Russell, A., Song, M., & Wang, W. (2013). The expected number of background disease events during mass immunization in China. PLos One, 8(8), e71818. Available here

Abstract

It is critical to distinguish events that are temporarily associated with, but not caused by, vaccination from those caused by vaccination during mass immunization. We performed a literature search in China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Pubmed databases. The number of coincident events was calculated based on its incidence rate and periods after receipt of a dose of hypothesized vaccine. We included background incidences of Guillain-Barre´ syndrome, anaphylaxis, seizure, sudden adult death syndrome, sudden cardiac death, spontaneous abortion, and preterm labour or delivery. In a cohort of 10 million individuals, 7.71 cases of Guillain-Barre´ syndrome would be expected to occur within six weeks of vaccination as coincident background cases. Even for rare events, a large number of events can be expected in a short period because of the large population targeted for immunization. These findings may encourage health authorities to screen the safety of vaccines against unpredictable pathogens.

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0071818

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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