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Antibody Persistence in Five-Year-Old Children Who Received a Pentavalent Combination Vaccine in Infancy

A DGReview of :"Antibody persistence in five-year-old children who received a pentavalent combination vaccine in infancy"
Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal

07/17/2002
By Mark Greener
 

Three and four dose schedules using a pentavalent combination vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio and Haemophilus influenzae maintain "satisfactory" antibody levels several years after dosing.

Researchers from Sahlgrenska University and other Swedish centres, with a researcher from Aventis Pasteur MSD, Copenhagen, Denmark, studied a cohort of children who received a pentavalent combination vaccine containing diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid, acellular pertussis, inactivated polio and Haemophilus influenzae type b conjugate as infants.

Children received either two or three priming doses. All children also received a booster dose after around a year. In the initial study, the proportion of children who attained protective antibody concentrations did not differ depending on the schedule. This paper reports follow-up after 4.5 years of 92 and 88 children that received a total of three and four doses respectively.

In general, neither antibody concentrations nor the proportions of children expressing protective levels differed significantly between groups. However, a difference emerged in antibody concentrations to poliovirus type 3.

Seventy-six percent showed antibody levels of at least 0.01 IU/ml against diphtheria by the Vero cell neutralization test, and 89 percent showed those antibody levels by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Ninety-three percent showed levels of at least 0.01 IU/ml for tetanus and 97 percent expressed at least 0.15 mu g/ml antibodies for Haemophilus influenzae type b. Between 96 and 99 percent showed detectable antibody levels against polioviruses type 3. The authors estimated the proportion of children with detectable antibodies against pertussis toxoid as 44, 94 and 99 percent depending on the method.

The authors concluded that levels of antibodies remained "satisfactory" 4.5 years following the initial dose. Moreover, no clinically relevant differences in antibody concentrations emerged between the three and four dose schedules.

Pediatr Infect Dis J 2002;21:535-541. "Antibody persistence in five-year-old children who received a pentavalent combination vaccine in infancy"

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