vaccine

The international team of researchers tested acellular vaccines in infants during pertussis epidemics in Italy and Sweden.

Acellular vaccines such as INFANRIX cause significantly fewer local and systemic reactions.

As proud as we are of the approval of Tripedia as the first acellular vaccine for infants, we are looking forward to the next chapter in pediatric immunization -- the approval of Tripedia combined with ActHIB(R) for infants, which we expect sometime during the next year.

This is comparable to results reported for other acellular vaccines in other trials.

Charles Manclark, chief of FDA's Pertussis Laboratory -- for leadership in fostering the development and testing of new acellular vaccines, along with the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, all parts of the Public Health Service within HHS.

Would it be effective to use the acellular vaccine for the first three shots--until the child is 18 months old--and then give the old whole-cell vaccine?

Forty-six infants had received no pertussis acellular vaccine, and 11 had received 1 dose.

A contributing factor could be the switch from the whole cell to the acellular vaccine, which may have an effect on how long immunity persists.

While admitting that the whole-cell pertussis vaccine was crudely made and contained more than 3,000 pertussis proteins, Offit tells nothing of the saga of replacing this with the much safer acellular vaccine, a story told in detail by David and Mark Geier.

Tripedia, which beat out at least three competitors to become the nation's first acellular vaccine, does cause fewer of the side effects like fever that, while medically merely annoying, frightened parents who had heard of the shots' very rare but serious complications: seizures or even brain damage.

The two acellular pertussis vaccines tested in Italy showed equal overall protection, but the Chiron Biocine genetically engineered acellular pertussis vaccine was found to have several distinguishing characteristics versus the chemically detoxified acellular vaccine from SmithKline Beecham with which it was compared, including a better safety profile.

What drove acellular vaccine development was misinformation about encephalopathy," Cherry says.

The study found teens who were vaccinated with four doses of acellular vaccine were at almost six times higher risk of pertussis than those who had received four doses of whole-cell vaccine.

Earlier studies by Kaiser Permanente have shown that protection from the fifth dose of acellular pertussis vaccine wanes substantially during the five years after vaccination among children 4 to 12 years of age who have only received the acellular vaccine.

Walther says, however, that this change to the so-called acellular vaccine is not immediately apparent to parents looking for safety information on the Internet.