Cost-effectiveness of routine vaccination of adolescent females against cytomegalovirus.

BACKGROUND: Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is associated with significant infant morbidity and mortality. A prophylactic vaccine to prevent congenital CMV infection is expected to be available in the near future, and will likely be targeted to adolescent females.
METHODS: Using a decision tree, we compared the costs, potential clinical impacts, and cost-effectiveness of the current strategy of no CMV vaccination versus a strategy where all adolescent females are vaccinated against CMV prior to their first pregnancy. Both maternal outcomes related to vaccination, and infant outcomes related to congenital CMV infection, were considered in the model.
RESULTS: Under base-case conditions, our analysis suggested that vaccinating all adolescent females against cytomegalovirus would be both less costly and with greater clinical benefits than not vaccinating. Among a population of 100,000 adolescent females, the vaccination strategy cost $32.3 million dollars less than not vaccinating, and avoided substantial numbers of infants affected with hearing loss, vision loss, and mental retardation, and 8 infant deaths. Our model was most sensitive to variations in vaccine efficacy. When vaccine efficacy against disease was less than 61%, not vaccinating became the preferred strategy because it was less expensive than vaccinating, without substantial changes in clinical benefits to the population.
CONCLUSIONS: Under a wide variety of conditions, universal vaccination of adolescent females to protect their future children against congenital CMV infection was cost effective. However, for this to be preferred over not vaccinating, our results suggest that vaccine efficacy against disease would need to be at least 61%.