The Ontology of Vaccine Adverse Events (OVAE) and its usage in representing and analyzing vaccine adverse events

Licensed human vaccines can induce various adverse events in vaccinated patients. Many known vaccine adverse events (VAEs) have been recorded in the package inserts of commercial vaccine products. To better represent and analyse VAEs, we developed the Ontology of Vaccine Adverse Events (OVAE) as an extension of the Ontology of Adverse Events (OAE) and the Vaccine Ontology (VO). OVAE has been used to represent and classify the adverse events recorded in package insert documents of commercial vaccines licensed by the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA). OVAE currently includes over 1100 terms, including 87 distinct types of VAEs associated with 63 human vaccines licensed in the USA. Specific VAE occurrence rates associated with different age groups have been recorded in OVAE. SPARQL scripts were developed to query and analyse the OVAE knowledge base data. The top 10 vaccines accompanying with the highest numbers of VAEs and the top 10 VAEs most frequently observed among vaccines were identified and analysed. Different VAE occurrences in different age groups were also analysed. The ontological representation and analysis of the VAE data associated with licensed human vaccines improves the classification and understanding of vaccine-specific VAEs which supports rational VAE prevention and treatment and benefits public health.