© 2005 BMJ Publishing Group & Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
LEADING ARTICLE
Immunology
Conjugate vaccines
1 Institute of Child Life and Health, Clinical Sciences at South Bristol, University of Bristol, UK
2 Dept of Child Health, and Vaccine Institute, St George’s Hospital Medical School London, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Prof. A Finn
David Baum Professor of Paediatrics, University of Bristol, Institute of Child Life & Health, Dept Clinical Sciences at South Bristol, Level 6, UBHT Education Centre, Upper Maudlin St, Bristol BS2 8AE, UK; Adam.Finn@bristol.ac.uk
Time for more of them or less of them?
Keywords: conjugate vaccine
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
It all used to seem so simple with conjugate vaccines. You added them to your infant schedule and, faster than anyone had dared to hope, the disease more or less vanished.1,2 Not only did immunisation protect against invasive disease but it reduced upper respiratory carriage rates too,3 so there was herd immunity. Even when odd, unexpected mixing problems cropped up out of the blue—like acellular pertussis and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) combinations4,5—it didn’t really seem to matter.6 In 1999 we watched as meningococcus group C (MenC) set off down the path to oblivion7,8 previously trod by Hib in 1992.9
Then, suddenly, with the arrival of the new millennium, it began to get more complicated. With the MMR vaccine scare still buzzing in people’s heads and the schedule busier with the addition of MenC, the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine turned up in 2001 with a central European licence
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
Relevant Article
- Atoms
- Howard Bauchner
Arch. Dis. Child. 2005 90: 661.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in ADC Online
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
TB and other respiratory infections
-
Meningitis
-
Immunology (including allergy)
-
Pneumonia (infectious disease)
-
Vaccination / immunisation
- Relevant Article
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
