Measles vaccine efficacy in India: a review.

Different workers have used different designs to assess effectiveness of live, further attenuated measles vaccine i.e., seroconversion studies, outbreak investigations, field trials and coverage survey methods. The results were often contradictory. We reanalyzed data from these studies to find out optimum vaccine efficacy (VE) and its determinants in the Indian context. Although nutritional status and sex of the subjects did not affect seroconversion rates, the rates were greater among initially seronegative and older children. Overall seroconversion rates in 9-11 months children ranged between 56 and 96%. Studies showing poor seroconversion had an inadequate sample size and/or technical flaws that detracted from the reliability of results. However, appropriately designed studies demonstrated seroconversion rates of more than 90% in 9-11 months children who were initially seronegative. Since 5-10% of 9-11 months old infants had persistent measles maternal antibody, measles vaccine may be around 85-90% effective in this age group. These results are in agreement with the findings observed in outbreak investigations. These outbreaks fulfilled all the criteria which are considered necessary for optimum estimation of VE in such settings; VE was found to be more than 90% in outbreak settings. Conversely, retrospective coverage surveys grossly under estimated VE (about 60%) which was probably due to misclassification of vaccination status of enrolled children. The surveys were undertaken in areas where immunization records were grossly incomplete and only few mothers retained immunization cards. Unfortunately, VE was also under estimated in field trials which were neither randomized nor blind, and no placebo injections were used in control children; many observations were on record which could explain the under estimation of VE. Reanalysis of data from different types of studies indicates that efficacy of measles vaccine given at 9-11 months of age is of the order of 85-90% in the Indian context.