The importance of anti-pneumococcal vaccines has increased due to the gradually increasing incidence rate of pneumococcal infections and their antibiotic resistance. Conjugate pneumococcal vaccine began to be used routinely in the USA in 2000. An important property of this conjugate vaccine is the ability to create immunity in infants after two months. Thus, conjugate vaccines allow us to prote...

Children with sickle cell disease were immunized with either 2 doses of 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine followed by 1 dose of 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine or a single dose of 23-valent vaccine. Functional antibodies to 7 vaccine serotypes were measured by a flow cytometric opsonophagocytic assay (OPA) and compared with IgG anticapsular polysaccharide antibody concentrat...

Since the introduction of the seven-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) in 2007, invasive pneumococcal disease has declined, but the incidence of Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 19A has risen worldwide. The present study examined changes in the features of invasive pneumococcal disease since the introduction of the PCV7 in Kochi, Japan. Pediatric cases of invasive pneumococcal diseas...

A randomized double-blind trial with a 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine was conducted in The Netherlands among 383 children, aged 1 to 7 years, with a history of recurrent acute otitis media. No effect of vaccination on the pneumococcal colonization rate was found. However, a shift in serotype distribution was clearly observed (R. Veenhoven et al., Lancet 361:2189-2195, 2003). We investi...

INTRODUCTION Adjuvants (for example, aluminum salts) are frequently incorporated in licensed vaccines to enhance the host immune response. Such vaccines include the pneumococcal conjugate, combinations of diphtheria-tetanus/acellular pertussis, tetanus- diphtheria/acellular pertussis, hepatitis B, some Haemophilus influenzae type b, hepatitis A, and human papillomavirus. These preparations have...

1. Barricarte A, Castilla J, Gil-Setas A, et al. Effectiveness of the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine: a population-based case-control study. Clin Infect Dis 2007; 44:1436–41. 2. Grimes DA, Schutlz KF. Bias and causal associations in observational research. Lancet 2002; 359:248–52. 3. Bland JM, Altman DG. Matching. BMJ 1994; 309:1128. 4. Barricarte A, Gil-Setas A, Torroba A, et al. Inva...

Applications of the heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) in the pediatric immunization schedule have dramatically reduced the incidence of pneumococcal diseases in both vaccinated children and unvaccinated individuals of all ages. However, increased infections caused by non-PCV7 serotypes have been reported by several groups. To overcome this problem, new vaccines covering more ser...

A cohort of 199 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infants, born in north Queensland in August and September 2002, were followed-up to ascertain the uptake of the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (7vPCV) by certain ages. Although 70 per cent of the cohort had received a dose of 7vPCV by three months, only 50 per cent had received three doses by seven months. Most (approximately 90%) o...

The number of notified cases of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in the 4th quarter of 2016 (n = 389) was less than the previous quarter (n = 643), but more than the number of notified cases in the 4th quarter of 2015 (n = 314). Overall, the decline in disease due to the serotypes targeted by the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (13vPCV) has been maintained across all age groups, sin...