Chicken pox vax ineffective - but let's use it anyway (original) (raw)

From Meryl Dorey, AVN, Australia

We must admire the tenacity and great marketing skills of the pharmaceutical companies. They have learned the lessons of true perseverance! If you find out that your vaccine doesn't work, say it works well, but just for not as long. That way, you open up the lucrative market for boosters. Better yet, if you find out that the vaccine is causing the disease its meant to prevent and/or that people who are vaccinated are still getting sick with this disease, call it 'breakthrough' not vaccine failure (after all, isn't a breakthrough a really good thing?) and talk about how much milder the disease is than it would have been had the people not been vaccinated and you have turned a failure into a success. We can learn a lot from these geniuses of marketing and double-speak.--Meryl Dorey

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Chicken Pox vaccine effectiveness decreases after first year, Butstill
yields excellent protection from the virus.

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M2 Presswire; 2/18/2004

M2 PRESSWIRE-18 February 2004-YALE: Chicken Pox vaccine effectiveness
decreases after first year, But still yields excellent protection from the
virus(C)1994-2004 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:02172004

New Haven, Conn. -- Yale researchers have found a major decrease in the
effectiveness of varicella (chicken pox) vaccine after the first year of
vaccination, but the vaccine is still very effective overall.

"The effectiveness of the varicella vaccine does drop substantially from 99
percent the first year after vaccination to 84 percent two to eight years
after vaccination," said first author Marietta Vazquez, M.D., associate
research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale School of
Medicine. "But eight years after vaccination, the overall effectiveness is
87 percent, which is still excellent."

The study, published in the February 18 issue of Journal of the American
Medical Association, also suggests that the vaccine might be less effective
in the first year after vaccination if it is administered to children less
than 15 months of age. Vazquez said this difference in effectiveness
disappears after the first year and overall is not significant.

The ongoing study conducted over the past seven years addresses concerns
about varicella outbreaks in highly immunized groups that have raised
controversy about the effectiveness of the varicella vaccine. The authors
assessed whether the effectiveness of varicella vaccine is affected either
by time since vaccination or age at the time of vaccination. They studied
339 children ages 13 months or older who were clinically diagnosed with
chicken pox after they had been vaccinated with varicella. Two controls were
selected for each study participant, matched by age and pediatric practice.

The researchers found the significant decrease in effectiveness one year
after vaccination, but most cases of breakthrough disease are mild.

"The vaccine's effectiveness against moderate or severe disease is excellent
throughout the period of the study," said Vazquez.

Vazquez and her team stress that it will be important to continue monitoring
effectiveness of the vaccine since boosts to immunity from exposure to
varicella will become increasingly rare as the incidence of varicella
diminishes.

Other authors on the study included senior investigator Eugene D. Shapiro,
M.D., Linda M. Niccolai and Catherine E.

Muchlenbein of Yale; and Philip S. LaRussa, M.D., Anne A.

Gershon, M.D. and Sharon P. Steinberg of Columbia University.

Citation: Journal of the American Medical Association, February 18,
2004-Vol. 291, No. 7

CONTACT: Karen N. PeartTel: +1 203 432 1326e-mail:karen.peart@yale.edu

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