Search

Item does not contain fulltext

An outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) in Italy involved 19 schoolchildren with active TB and 43 with latent infection. The source of the outbreak was a school assistant born in Italy who had a family history of TB. This outbreak highlights the need for maintaining clinical and public health expertise in countries with low TB incidence.

The study was performed to evaluate the effects of influenza and pneumococcal vaccines administered alone or in combination. 124 elderly subjects living in community were vaccinated either with influenza split vaccine or with pneumococcal 23-valent or with both vaccines at the same time in different sites. Sera were tested for hemoagglutination inhibiting antibodies for influenza and for antibodies against 23-valent vaccine for streptococcus pneumoniae. No side effects were observed in the vaccinated population. Serological results indicated that influenza vaccine increased significantly antibody levels. No difference was observed between the group which received influenza vaccine alone and that which received influenza and pneumococcal vaccines associated, considering either G.M.T or the percentages of protected individuals or the percentages of subjects who seroconverted. When pneumococcal vaccine was administered at the same time with influenza vaccine, there was a not statistically significant reduction in both mean antibody concentration and mean fold increase. It is concluded that the simultaneous administration of influenza and pneumococcal vaccines to elderly individuals, including subjects at risk, is safe, effective and economically advantageous.

Background The signal of an association between vaccination in the second year of life with a hexavalent vaccine and sudden unexpected deaths (SUD) in the two days following vaccination was reported in Germany in 2003. A study to establish whether the immunisation with hexavalent vaccines increased the short term risk of SUD in infants was conducted in Italy. Methodology/Principal Findings The reference population comprises around 3 million infants vaccinated in Italy in the study period 1999–2004 (1.5 million received hexavalent vaccines). Events of SUD in infants aged 1–23 months were identified through the death certificates. Vaccination history was retrieved from immunisation registries. Association between immunisation and death was assessed adopting a case series design focusing on the risk periods 0–1, 0–7, and 0–14 days after immunisation. Among the 604 infants who died of SUD, 244 (40%) had received at least one vaccination. Four deaths occurred within two days from vaccination with the hexavalent vaccines (RR = 1.5; 95% CI 0.6 to 4.2). The RRs for the risk periods 0–7 and 0–14 were 2.0 (95% CI 1.2 to 3.5) and 1.5 (95% CI 0.9 to 2.4). The increased risk was limited to the first dose (RR = 2.2; 95% CI 1.1 to 4.4), whereas no increase was observed for the second and third doses combined. Conclusions The RRs of SUD for any vaccines and any risk periods, even when greater than 1, were almost an order of magnitude lower than the estimates in Germany. The limited increase in RRs found in Italy appears confined to the first dose and may be partly explained by a residual uncontrolled confounding effect of age.

The immunogenicity and reactogenicity of a booster dose of enhanced potency inactivated polio vaccine (EIPV) were evaluated in 492 healthy 12 year old adolescents. The booster was administered at the same time as the HBV vaccine compulsory in Italy at this age. Blood samples and questionnaires on reactogenicity were collected over 9 months. Analysis of pre-vaccination immunity showed that 97.4% of the subjects were protected against all polio types, 1.9% were negative for two polio types and 0.6% for one. After vaccination 98.4% of the vaccinees showed a significant increase ( > or = 4 times) of antibody titre; the geometric mean titres (GMT) were markedly higher than before vaccination, particularly for poliovirus type 3. The polio booster dose did not affect HBV vaccination. An anti-HBs response > 10 mIU ml-1. (GMT = 2951 mIU ml-1) was observed in 781 (98.6%) of 792 vaccinees (492 given EIPV+HBV and 300 given only HBV) 9 months later. Only mild local and rare general reactions were noted for both the vaccines studied. These data confirm the suitability and efficacy of an EIPV booster dose and HBV vaccination in adolescents.

Normal and pathological lymphoid cells, collected from different sources, were cryopreserved using a programmed freezing procedure. With this cryopreservation technique, the percentage of T and B cell surface markers and the proliferative response to mitogens were not influenced by 21 and 35 days of storage in liquid nitrogen. The recovery percentage of the lymphoid cells was satisfactory when fetal calf serum was added, as a protein source, to the medium during freezing and thawing phases, while a very low percentage of cells was recovered if the fetal calf serum was omitted.