Rubella immunization of teenage girls in Iceland and follow-up after a severe rubella epidemic

Of 730 Icelandic schoolgirls, 12 years of age, screened for rubella antibodies by the haemagglutination-inhibition (HI) technique, 372 (50.9%) were found to be seronegative. Rubella vaccine was administered to 355 members of this group, and to 12 girls with an HI titre of 20. Blood samples were take...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Rafnar, Björg
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1982
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2536011
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6979417
Description
Summary:Of 730 Icelandic schoolgirls, 12 years of age, screened for rubella antibodies by the haemagglutination-inhibition (HI) technique, 372 (50.9%) were found to be seronegative. Rubella vaccine was administered to 355 members of this group, and to 12 girls with an HI titre of 20. Blood samples were taken 6 weeks and 1 year after immunization from 336 previously seronegative girls and from the 12 low-positive vaccinees, and tested for HI antibodies. The seroconversion rate was 99.15%. One year after immunization, 94.8% of the girls tested had an HI antibody titre of 40 or more. The geometric mean titre (GMT) of the previously seronegative girls was 62.07 at 6 weeks and 61.69 at one year after vaccination. Of the girls with an initially low positive titre, only 3 (25%) showed a significant rise. The GMT was 40 at 6 weeks, but fell to 25.2 after 1 year. Re-immunization had no effect on antibody levels in either group.