Postlicensure safety surveillance for 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine.

CONTEXT: Clinical trials evaluate a vaccine's safety before approval, but some risks may escape detection or adequate characterization until larger population exposures occur after licensure.

OBJECTIVE: To summarize reports of events occurring after vaccination with 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), including those that may warrant further investigation to assess possible causation by PCV.

DESIGN: Descriptive epidemiology of reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a national passive surveillance database.

SETTING AND PATIENTS: United States during first 2 years after licensure of PCV (February 2000 through February 2002). Reports studied were for children younger than 18 years and vaccinated with PCV.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Numbers and proportional distributions of reports.

RESULTS: A total of 4154 reports of events following PCV were submitted to VAERS, for a rate of 13.2 reports per 100,000 doses distributed. Multiple vaccines were given in 74.3% of reports. The most frequently reported symptoms and signs included fever, injection site reactions, fussiness, rashes, and urticaria. Serious events were described in 14.6% of reports. There were 117 deaths, 23 reports of positive rechallenges, and 34 cases of invasive pneumococcal infections possibly representing vaccine failure. Immune-mediated events occurred in 31.3% of reports. All 14 patients with anaphylactic or anaphylactoid reactions survived. Thrombocytopenia developed in 14 patients and serum sickness in 6 others. Neurologic symptoms occurred in 38% of reports. Seizures described in 393 reports included 94 febrile seizures.

CONCLUSIONS: The majority of reports to VAERS in the first 2 years after licensure of PCV described generally minor adverse events previously identified in clinical trials. The proportion of reports portraying serious events was similar to that for other vaccines. Although there are important limitations in passive surveillance data, and caution in their interpretation is necessary, symptoms experienced by a few children more than once after successive PCV doses, including allergic reactions, prolonged or abnormal crying, fussiness, dyspnea, and gastrointestinal distress, warrant continued surveillance, as do reports of rare but potentially serious events, such as seizures, anaphylactic or anaphylactoid reactions, serum sickness, and thrombocytopenia.