"The Effect of Disease Prior to an Outbreak on Estimates of Vaccine Efficacy Following the Outbreak."

According to the authors' abstract of an article published in American Journal of Epidemiology, "A common source of bias in evaluating vaccine efficacy following a disease outbreak is the presence of persons who had the disease prior to the outbreak. This paper examines the effects of including and excluding pre-outbreak disease cases from the calculation of vaccine efficacy based on the cumulative incidence at the end of an outbreak. Using a five-stage model, the effects of the following factors on the bias of vaccine efficacy estimates are examined: the true protective efficacy of the vaccine, the prevaccination infection rate, differences in vaccine uptake among the previously...

Want to see the full article?

• Purchase this article for only $3.00