Near Elimination of Varicella Deaths in the US After Implementation of the Vaccination Program Full Text
Pediatrics, 08/15/2011
Marin M et al. – The impressive decline in varicella deaths can be directly attributed to successful implementation of the 1–dose vaccination program. With the current 2–dose program, there is potential that these most severe outcomes of a vaccine–preventable disease could be eliminated.
Methods- National data on deaths for which varicella was listed as an underlying or contributing cause were obtained from the Mortality Multiple Cause-of-Death records from the US National Center for Health Statistics.
- These calculated the age-adjusted and age-specific mortality rates for 2002–2007 and trends since the prevaccine years.
- During the 12 years of the mostly 1-dose US varicella vaccination program, the annual average mortality rate for varicella listed as the underlying cause declined 88%, from 0.41 per million population in 1990–1994 to 0.05 per million population in 2005–2007.
- The decline occurred in all age groups, and there was an extremely high reduction among children and adolescents younger than 20 years (97%) and among subjects younger than 50 years overall (96%).
- In the last 6 years analyzed (2002–2007), a total of 3 deaths per age range were reported among children aged 1 to 4 and 5 to 9 years, compared with an annual average of 13 and 16 deaths, respectively, during the prevaccine years.
