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University Of Michigan Study: Time To Resume Routine Vaccination Against Smallpox?

Date:
May 9, 2002
Source:
University Of Michigan Health System
Summary:
Immunizing young Americans against smallpox before a bioterrorist attack might save many more lives than a strategy focused exclusively on isolating and vaccinating those at risk after an attack. But a mass-vaccination approach would cost more up front and would have to be done cautiously because of illnesses and deaths the vaccine itself could cause.
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BALTIMORE -- Immunizing young Americans against smallpox before a bioterrorist attack might save many more lives than a strategy focused exclusively on isolating and vaccinating those at risk after an attack. But a mass-vaccination approach would cost more up front and would have to be done cautiously because of illnesses and deaths the vaccine itself could cause.

Those conclusions, from an analysis performed by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System, were presented May 7 at the meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies.

The federal government currently prefers a post-attack strategy called ôring vaccination," in which individuals identified with smallpox would be quarantined and their close contacts would receive smallpox vaccine after exposure to reduce the spread of illness.

The study examined the cost-effectiveness of different pre-attack vaccination strategies in conjunction with ring vaccination, compared to ring vaccination alone. It found that campaigns to immunize 50 percent to 75 percent of Americans aged 1 to 30 years, if completed before a smallpox terrorist attack, could save hundreds of lives compared to the potential deaths from an attack managed with only with ring vaccination.

The researchers, led by U-M pediatrician and internist Matthew Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., hope their results may help guide public officials at a time when terrorist attacks and anthrax cases have renewed fears of a smallpox attack and led the U.S. government to increase its stockpile of smallpox vaccine.

Routine inoculation of US children was stopped in 1972 when the risk of vaccine side effects was judged to outweigh the benefit. National infectious disease experts assume that individuals immunized prior to 1972 have no remaining immunity against smallpox. This is a major concern, because smallpox is lethal in about 30 percent of those it infects.

However, the smallpox vaccine ù composed of live vaccinia (cowpox) virus ù also carries risks. Prior experiences with smallpox vaccine indicate that one in a million vaccinees is expected to die from severe complications of immunization, while many more will develop less severe side effects. Children under 1 year are not vaccinated for fear of high complication rates.

After last fall's terrorist attacks, the federal government ordered over one hundred million doses of the smallpox vaccine ù enough by the end of 2002 to vaccinate all Americans aged 1 to 29 years old. The recent discovery of tens of millions of stockpiled smallpox vaccine doses by a manufacturer, and their donation to the federal government, has made the prospect of mass vaccination even more feasible.

"Given the larger anticipated supply of smallpox vaccine, we set out to evaluate the potential effects of different mass vaccination campaigns targeting those born after the end of routine vaccination in 1972, to compare them with the currently favored ring vaccination strategy," says Davis. "We developed a computer model to assess the effects of campaigns that reached either 50 percent of people aged 1 to 29 years old, or 75 percent of them, and based our calculations on risks, probabilities and costs from the best available data."

In all, the researchers estimate that vaccinating half of all people aged 1 to 29 years (57.5 million people) prior to a smallpox attack would cost about $286 million, including the costs of the mass immunization program itself as well as the costs of time lost from work and hospitalizations for complications related to vaccination. A campaign to vaccinate 75 percent of young people would cost about $430 million. In contrast, ring vaccination efforts after an attack that initially infected 100 people would cost about $3 million.

But 2,160 people would die with ring vaccination alone during the year after an attack, as opposed to 358 people in the 50-percent vaccination scenario or 244 people in the 75-percent pre-attack vaccination scenario. Neither mass vaccination approach in the model would reach all young people, because the researchers estimate that approximately 25 percent are expected to have medical conditions that put themselves at high risk for complicati


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Materials provided by University Of Michigan Health System. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

University Of Michigan Health System. "University Of Michigan Study: Time To Resume Routine Vaccination Against Smallpox?." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 May 2002. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020509075301.htm>.
University Of Michigan Health System. (2002, May 9). University Of Michigan Study: Time To Resume Routine Vaccination Against Smallpox?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 27, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020509075301.htm
University Of Michigan Health System. "University Of Michigan Study: Time To Resume Routine Vaccination Against Smallpox?." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/05/020509075301.htm (accessed March 27, 2024).

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