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A correction has been published: N Engl J Med 2009;360(6):648.
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Background Young infants and pregnant women are at increased risk for serious consequences of influenza infection. Inactivated influenza vaccine is recommended for pregnant women but is not licensed for infants younger than 6 months of age. We assessed the clinical effectiveness of inactivated influenza vaccine administered during pregnancy in Bangladesh.
Methods In this randomized study, we assigned 340 mothers to receive either inactivated influenza vaccine (influenza-vaccine group) or the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (control group). Mothers were interviewed weekly to assess illnesses until 24 weeks after birth. Subjects with febrile respiratory illness were assessed clinically, and ill infants were tested for influenza antigens. We estimated the incidence of illness, incidence rate ratios, and vaccine effectiveness.
Results Mothers and infants were observed from August 2004 through December 2005. Among infants of mothers who received influenza vaccine, there were fewer cases of laboratory-confirmed influenza than among infants in the control group (6 cases and 16 cases, respectively), with a vaccine effectiveness of 63% (95% confidence interval [CI], 5 to 85). Respiratory illness with fever occurred in 110 infants in the influenza-vaccine group and 153 infants in the control group, with a vaccine effectiveness of 29% (95% CI, 7 to 46). Among the mothers, there was a reduction in the rate of respiratory illness with fever of 36% (95% CI, 4 to 57).
Conclusions Inactivated influenza vaccine reduced proven influenza illness by 63% in infants up to 6 months of age and averted approximately a third of all febrile respiratory illnesses in mothers and young infants. Maternal influenza immunization is a strategy with substantial benefits for both mothers and infants. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00142389
[ClinicalTrials.gov]
.)
Natural maternal influenza antibodies protect infants during the first few months of life.15,16 A study of influenza immunization of pregnant women showed that active transport of immunoglobulin G produced umbilical-cord antibody levels that were higher than those in maternal serum.17 Epidemiologic data suggest that breast-feeding is also protective against influenza in young infants.18
Immunization of pregnant women with inactivated trivalent influenza vaccine has been recommended in the United States for more than a decade19 and by the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2005.20 However, few mothers receive the vaccine.7 The general safety of this strategy has been shown,21,22 but there has been no randomized, prospective evaluation of its clinical effectiveness.19,23 Antiviral drugs are not recommended for use in early pregnancy.19
Since 2003 in the United States, influenza immunization has been recommended for infants between the ages of 6 months and 23 months,19 although vaccine immunogenicity may be reduced in children under the age of 2 years.24,25 Influenza vaccines are not licensed in the United States for use in infants under the age of 6 months, and antiviral drugs for influenza therapy are not licensed for infants under the age of 1 year.19,26
The Mother's Gift project is a randomized trial of the strategy of maternal immunization, with the primary goal of assessing the safety and immunogenicity of sequential maternal and infant immunization with pneumococcal vaccines in Bangladesh. In our study of influenza vaccine, mothers in the control group received pneumococcal vaccine only. No infants received the influenza vaccine. We made use of the opportunity afforded by the randomized, blinded design to assess the influenza-related illnesses of the mothers who had received the influenza vaccine and their infants, as compared with those who received only pneumococcal vaccine. We report here estimates of the clinical effectiveness of maternal immunization with inactivated influenza vaccine on influenza illness in infants and mothers.
Methods
Study Design
We conducted a prospective, controlled, blinded, randomized trial to assess the safety and immunogenicity of pneumococcal vaccines, as well as the clinical effectiveness of influenza vaccine (Figure 1). The primary outcome in infants was the first episode of laboratory-confirmed influenza before 24 weeks of age. Other outcomes in the infants were the confirmation of influenza-like illness by a clinician and confirmation by obtaining a throat swab for influenza antigen testing. Study outcomes for both mothers and infants were the numbers of episodes of respiratory illness with fever or of documented fever of more than 38°C, clinic visits with respiratory illness, and episodes of diarrhea (nonrespiratory end point for both groups).
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The randomization sequence was computer-generated, stratified according to clinic, and blocked in groups of four; sequentially numbered opaque envelopes with data regarding assignments to study groups were provided to each clinic. Mothers, families, and study staff who collected data regarding illnesses and adverse events were unaware of the study-group assignments. Blood was collected from mothers before and after immunization; for infants, cord blood was collected at birth, and samples were taken at 6, 10, 14, and 18 weeks and between 22 and 24 weeks for serologic assessment. All infants received the local routine childhood immunizations at 6, 10, and 14 weeks. Infants in the primary immunogenicity study received either three doses of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (Prevnar, Wyeth) or Haemophilus influenzae type b conjugate vaccine (Hiberix, GlaxoSmithKline) at 6, 10, and 14 weeks.
The project protocol was reviewed and approved by the institutional review boards at the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Use of study vaccines was approved by the Directorate of Drug Administration, the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. All the authors vouch for the completeness of the data and the analyses presented.
Study Vaccines
Mothers were randomly assigned to receive an inactivated influenza virus vaccine, Fluarix (lot number, AFLUA004BC), containing strains for 2004 (including A/New Caledonia/20/99 [H1N1], A/Fujian/411/2002 [H3N2], and B/Hong Kong/330/2001), as recommended by the WHO for the southern hemisphere, or the 23-valent polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine, Pneumovax (lot number, 0987N). All study vaccines were purchased from the manufacturer. Clinic staff members who were not involved with study-outcome assessments administered all doses of vaccine by intramuscular injection.
Surveillance
All mothers were interviewed 8, 24, 48, and 72 hours after immunization and then 1 week later by telephone or home interview to record local and systemic side effects. Most mothers were followed from 2 weeks after immunization through pregnancy and delivery, and all mothers were interviewed once a week from the birth of the infant through 24 weeks of age to assess the occurrence of illnesses in themselves and their infants. Of the 340 mothers who underwent randomization, 331 mothers and their infants (97.4%) began surveillance after delivery, and 316 mother–infant pairs (92.9%) completed the 24 weeks of study surveillance.
Mothers were given digital thermometers and were taught to record axillary temperatures of their infants. Families were asked to bring infants who were ill to the study clinic for evaluation, influenza-antigen testing, and treatment. For clinician-confirmed acute febrile respiratory illness in infants, throat swabs were collected and tested within 24 hours after collection by laboratory technicians at the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research in Dhaka, using a rapid test for both influenza A and B (Zstat, ZymeTx). Test results were provided to the clinicians to guide treatment of the patients. Because of a shortage of rapid tests, episodes of respiratory illness with fever in infants from August 2004 through October 2004 could not be tested, and maternal illnesses were not tested. An independent data and safety monitoring board and both institutional review boards reviewed all severe adverse events (for details, see the Supplementary Appendix).
Statistical Analysis
The numbers of subjects that were needed for the primary study were calculated to detect a specified difference in the mean pneumococcal antibody titer in the two groups27 (see the Supplementary Appendix for details). The sample size had a power of 80% to detect a difference in illness rate of 30% or more. For a comparison of study groups, we assessed group means with Student's t-test and proportions with the chi-square test and Fisher's exact test; all tests were two-sided. Intention-to-treat analysis was performed on the outcome data. Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) were calculated for the study outcomes with the use of Poisson regression models (see the Supplementary Appendix for details). Estimates of clinical effectiveness were calculated with the formula (1–IRR)x100. We used a post hoc analysis with an interaction term to assess the effect of all infant vaccines that did not contain the inactivated influenza virus. There were no interim analyses of the data. All P values are two-sided and not adjusted for multiple testing. Associations with a P value of less than 0.05 or effectiveness confidence intervals that did not include 0 were considered to have statistical significance.
Results
Population and Adverse Events
A total of 340 women in the third trimester of pregnancy who met the inclusion criteria agreed to participate in the study. The mothers and infants in the two study groups were similar in both demographic and other characteristics (Table 1). Minor local and systemic side effects that occurred during the first 7 days after immunization were similar in the two groups of mothers except for local pain, which was more frequent among the mothers who received pneumococcal vaccine. The difference in the rate of severe adverse events between the two groups was not significant (for details, see the Supplementary Appendix).
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Mothers were recruited and immunized from August 2004 through May 2005, and cohorts of mother–infant pairs were observed through November 2005, for a total of 1651 person-months in the group of infants and 2165 person-months in the group of mothers. Of the mother–infant pairs, 316 were observed for the full 24-week period. During this time, 22 infants had at least one laboratory-confirmed influenza infection (Figure 2).
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The frequent, close observation of our Bangladeshi subjects provided unique, serendipitous descriptive data on the natural history of influenza in this South Asian environment, although these observations were not a primary objective of our study. In tropical and subtropical regions, influenza viruses may be perennial with some seasonal variation, causing disease for much of the year.12,28,29 Limited data regarding influenza are available for Dhaka, which is located at 23.5°N, virtually on the Tropic of Cancer.30,31 Our surveillance in Dhaka showed evidence of the circulation of influenza virus for 10 of 11 months of observation. Our preliminary data for infants showed that in the control group, the incidence of laboratory-proven influenza illness was at least 10% in the first 6 months of life. In addition, we observed that one infant in each study group had two episodes of laboratory-confirmed influenza (at 1 and 12 weeks in the influenza-vaccine group and at 9 and 28 weeks in the control group). In the mothers, the observed effect of influenza vaccine on febrile illnesses suggested that at least 36% of all maternal febrile respiratory illnesses are attributable to influenza up to 6 months post partum.32,33
Discussion
Our study showed that maternal immunization with influenza vaccine had significant clinical effectiveness, with a reduction of 63% in laboratory-proven influenza illness in infants up to 6 months of age and reductions of 29% and 36% in rates of respiratory illness with fever in infants and mothers, respectively. Although the confidence limits for the effectiveness of passive immunization were wide, the point estimates of effectiveness against both laboratory-proven influenza and multiple clinical end points in the infants were similar to those reported in trials of active influenza vaccine in infants older than 6 months of age.25 However, our findings differ from those of some nonrandomized, retrospective studies involving a review of patient records.34,35
The randomized and masked nature of the intervention, with the prospective weekly surveillance, allowed us to measure the clinical effects of influenza immunization in both mothers and infants with minimal bias, as evidenced by similar rates in study groups for reported diarrheal disease. The observed vaccine effect in the context of perennial circulation of a variety of influenza virus strains provides a generalizable estimate of the clinical effectiveness of the strategy of maternal immunization in this setting. These data also suggest that infants were protected from clinical illness up to the age of 5 to 6 months, somewhat longer than earlier estimates of passive protection.16,17
The rapid test that we used detects influenza neuraminidase and is reported to have a specificity of 80 to 90% and a sensitivity of 70 to 72% for both type A and type B influenza.36,37 These sensitivity data suggest that perhaps a quarter of true influenza cases were not detected. The test probably was performed in a similar fashion in the two study groups, so that the observed relative reduction or effectiveness would be unaffected, but the absolute incidence of influenza illness in study subjects was underestimated. An independent community surveillance for influenza illness, carried out in Dhaka by the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the same period as this study, corroborated the perennial local presence of influenza viruses during the study period and documented the variety of influenza virus strains in circulation.30
The study was randomized and controlled, but the analytic comparison was between groups who had received maternal influenza vaccine or another active noninfluenza vaccine, not between active immunization and placebo. It is possible that in the control group, infants of mothers who received pneumococcal vaccine had a reduced incidence of pneumococcus-associated respiratory illness with fever and a reduced number of clinic visits.38,39 Such a possibility would reduce the apparent effectiveness of maternal influenza vaccine. In addition, infants were randomly assigned to receive either haemophilus conjugate or pneumococcus conjugate vaccine (Figure 1), which after several doses may have reduced cases of respiratory illness with fever and clinic visits during the fourth and fifth months of life.40 However, the randomization of infants ensured that the clinical effect of the infant immunizations would have been similar in the two study groups, with minimal influence on the apparent effectiveness of maternal influenza vaccine. The post hoc interaction analysis was consistent with the lack of effect of infant noninfluenza immunization on influenza-associated illness. Overall, the assessment of these factors suggests that the effect of influenza vaccine we observed in this study underestimated the true effect of maternal influenza immunization.
Our study had several potential limitations. The project did not have resources for carrying out virologic studies, so we had no study data on the strains of influenza virus that were prevalent during the study period, though independent local data describing the variety of influenza viruses in Dhaka during the study period were reported previously.30 Our study did not have statistical power to assess the infrequent outcomes of influenza, including hospitalization and severe illness. However, the substantial reduction of laboratory-proven influenza illness suggests that a proportion of infrequent serious outcomes of influenza infection would have been averted also. The influenza rapid diagnostic tests were received late and were in short supply, so we tested only some of the infants; this suggests that some episodes of laboratory-proven influenza were not detected in both mothers and infants. However, we did record in detail all illnesses each week throughout the entire project, providing a measure of illnesses that were prevented by the influenza vaccine.
The study surveillance continued for 15 months, representing a relatively brief assessment of the strategy of maternal immunization in this setting. Since a variety of influenza viruses circulated during at least 10 of those months, we suggest that the effectiveness data are representative for this Asian region and are probably generalizable elsewhere as a biologic effect of influenza immunization in pregnant women.
Our data show that a single dose of maternal influenza vaccine provides a considerable two-for-one benefit to both mothers and their young infants. The absolute reduction in the rate of illness showed that every 100 influenza immunizations in pregnancy prevented respiratory illness with fever of more than 38°C in 14 infants and 7 mothers. In other words, five pregnant women would need to be vaccinated to prevent a single case of respiratory illness with fever in a mother or infant.41 These study data also indicate that influenza immunization of fewer than 16 mothers prevented one laboratory-proven influenza illness in the young infants.
In summary, the clinical effectiveness of influenza vaccine against both laboratory-proven influenza and several other respiratory illnesses shown in this randomized study is unique evidence supporting the strategy of maternal immunization to prevent influenza infection in young infants and their mothers. In a tropical setting of perennial transmission of influenza virus, maternal influenza immunization for much of the year had a substantial protective effect in both mothers and their young infants. In regions with limited financial resources, the strategy of maternal immunization is widely used for tetanus prevention, and antenatal-immunization systems are in place. Our study suggests that the antenatal-immunization strategy should be evaluated further for the prevention of influenza. Additional, larger studies will need to be carried out for several years with annual new formulations of influenza vaccine to show the full effect of the strategy of maternal influenza immunization in tropical and subtropical regions.
Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a cooperative agreement (HRN-A-0096-90006-00) with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Vaccine Program Office, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, the Thrasher Research Fund, Aventis Pasteur, the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Breiman reports receiving research support from Merck, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and USAID. Dr. Steinhoff, receiving research support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, the Thrasher Fund, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, and Merck and lecture fees from GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis. No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
We thank Dr. Mizanur Rahman, Prof. A.B. Bhuiyan, Dr. Kazi Nurun Nabi, and Dr. David Sack for their assistance in the project; Dr. L. Moulton for useful discussions and helpful advice; Dr. Shelia Salisbury for statistical assistance; Dr. Regina Rabinowitz for persistent support and useful suggestions; the field and data-management team for their efforts; and the families who participated in the project.
Source Information
From the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Dhaka, Bangladesh (K.Z., E.R., S.E.A., M.R., R.R., N.S.S., R.F.B.); and the Bloomberg School of Public Health (E.W., S.B.O., M.C.S.), Institute for Vaccine Safety (S.B.O.), and Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine (M.C.S.) — all at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
This article (10.1056/NEJMoa0708630) was published at www.nejm.org on September 17, 2008.
Address reprint requests to Dr. Steinhoff at the Children's Global Health Center, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, 3333 Burnet Ave., MLC 2048, Cincinnati, OH 45229, or at m.steinhoff{at}gmail.com.
References
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Related Letters:
Effectiveness of Maternal Influenza Immunization
Tandon S. S., Omer S. B., Zaman K., Steinhoff M. C.
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N Engl J Med 2009;
360:537-538, Jan 29, 2009.
Correspondence
This article has been cited by other articles:
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