International journal of epidemiology
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Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Child mortality following standard, medium or high titre measles immunization in West Africa.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of high titre measles vaccine in 1989. Subsequent long term follow-up of several trials yielded results suggesting higher mortality among children inoculated with medium and high titre vaccines compared to standard titre vaccines, although none of the individual trials found significant differences in mortality. ⋯ The combined analysis showed a decreased survival related to high titre measles vaccine compared with standard titre vaccines, though solely among females. As a result of these studies from West Africa and a study from Haiti, WHO has recommended that high titre measles vaccine no longer be used.
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In general, information on the causes of adult deaths in developing countries is scarce. More specifically, relatively little is known about the effect of HIV-1 associated disease on adult mortality in general populations. In this study we have used a verbal autopsy technique to ascertain whether adult deaths were associated with HIV-1 in a rural population with a prevalence of HIV-1 infection of 8%, and used HIV-1 antibody status to validate the verbal autopsy findings. ⋯ The results of this study suggest that verbal autopsy studies may assist in providing data on HIV-associated mortality in general populations and may be useful as surveillance tools.