Relationship between Self-Reported Vaccination History and Measles and Rubella Antibody Titers in Medical and Nursing Students

Abstract

In hospitals, infection control for measles and rubella is important. Medical and nursing students as well as healthcare workers must have immunity against these diseases. Many countries have adopted requirements for healthcare workers' documented vaccination history or laboratory tests as evidence of their immunity. Evaluating a written vaccination history is difficult in many cases. Therefore, we compared measles and rubella antibody titers with self-reported vaccination history and we evaluated the association between the history and measles and rubella antibody titers, using the medical and nursing students' data. We analyzed 564 data for measles and 558 data for rubella. Vaccination history was requested to be completed as accurately as possible. Students with one or more measles or rubella vaccinations had high positive ratios of titer, and the ratio was significantly higher than that of the students without vaccinations. The positive ratio between the two-dose and one-dose vaccination groups was not significantly different for measles or rubella (measles: p = 0.534, rubella: p = 0.452). Although it should be requested that the history is complete by using other resources, such as referring to maternity passbooks or proof of vaccination, self-reported history may be useful to confirm immunity, even if there is a possibility that the history is not accurate.

Estudo soroepidemiológico do sarampo em populações residentes na Região Metropolitana de Belém, estado do Pará, Brasil, 2016 a 2018

“…Esses resultados mostram que, para alcançar a imunidade, uma dose da vacina pode ser o suficiente; porém, de acordo com o relatório do Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 32 , uma dose da vacina SCR apresenta cerca de 93,0% de eficácia para o sarampo, e duas doses ou mais, 97,0%. Ao comparar os dados deste estudo com os do relatório do CDC e os do estudo de Ogawa et al 33 , que avaliou o histórico de vacinação em médicos e estudantes de enfermagem, o nível de imunidade deste estudo foi inferior; porém, os resultados entre a comparação entre o número de doses foram semelhantes. Lievano et al 34 detectaram 8% de pessoas sem sintomas clássicos com evidências sorológicas de infecção para o sarampo.…”