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Research Paper
Post-Licensure Safety of the Meningococcal Group C Conjugate Vaccine
Nick Andrews, Julia Stowe, Elizabeth Miller and Brent Taylor
volume 3 | issue 2
march/april 2007Pages: 59 - 63
This is an open-access article
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Passive surveillance reports of adverse events following meningococcal group C conjugate vaccine (MCCV) in the United Kingdom suggested a possible increased risk convulsions and purpura. To investigate this further, hospital admissions for convulsions and purpura were obtained for the period November 1999 to September 2003 in children from the South East of England and these were linked to vaccine records for MCCV, Diphtheria/Tetanus/Pertussis vaccine (DTP) and Measles/Mumps/Rubella vaccine (MMR). A total of 1,715 children with convulsions and 363 with purpura were successfully linked to vaccination records. The self-controlled case-series method was then used to investigate whether there was any epidemiological evidence of an increased risk of convulsions or purpura following vaccination. The results showed that there was no evidence of an increased relative incidence (RI) of convulsions in the two weeks following MCCV with RI estimates (95% confidence intervals) of 0.57 (0.36-0.86), 1.03 (0.62-1.69) and 0.81 (0.51-1.30) for children aged <1, 1, 2-17 years respectively. There was also no increased relative incidence of purpura in the 4 weeks following MCCV, with an overall RI of 1.15 (0.80-1.67). There was evidence of an increased risk of convulsions and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura following MMR vaccination as previously documented.
Authors
Nick Andrews
Health Protection Agency; London, England, UK
Julia Stowe
Immunisation Department, Health Protection Agency, Centre for Infections; London, UK
Elizabeth Miller
Health Protection Agency; London, UK
Brent Taylor
Institute of Child Health, University College London; London, UK
This is an open-access article
Download PDFIf the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.