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Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic

The urgency to develop vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the acceleration of clinical trials. Specifically, a broad spectrum of efficacy levels has been reported for various vaccines based on phase III cohort studies. Our study demonstrates that conducting large cohort phase III...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Scala, Antonio, Cavallo, Pierpaolo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10501570/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37708163
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290652
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author Scala, Antonio
Cavallo, Pierpaolo
author_facet Scala, Antonio
Cavallo, Pierpaolo
author_sort Scala, Antonio
collection PubMed
description The urgency to develop vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the acceleration of clinical trials. Specifically, a broad spectrum of efficacy levels has been reported for various vaccines based on phase III cohort studies. Our study demonstrates that conducting large cohort phase III clinical trials during the peak of an epidemic leads to a significant underestimation of vaccine efficacy, even in the absence of confounding factors. Furthermore, we find that this underestimation increases with the proportion of infectious individuals in the population during the experiment and the severity of the epidemic, as measured by its basic reproduction number.
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spelling pubmed-105015702023-09-15 Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic Scala, Antonio Cavallo, Pierpaolo PLoS One Research Article The urgency to develop vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the acceleration of clinical trials. Specifically, a broad spectrum of efficacy levels has been reported for various vaccines based on phase III cohort studies. Our study demonstrates that conducting large cohort phase III clinical trials during the peak of an epidemic leads to a significant underestimation of vaccine efficacy, even in the absence of confounding factors. Furthermore, we find that this underestimation increases with the proportion of infectious individuals in the population during the experiment and the severity of the epidemic, as measured by its basic reproduction number. Public Library of Science 2023-09-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10501570/ /pubmed/37708163 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290652 Text en © 2023 Scala, Cavallo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Scala, Antonio
Cavallo, Pierpaolo
Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic
title Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic
title_full Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic
title_fullStr Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic
title_full_unstemmed Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic
title_short Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic
title_sort measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10501570/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37708163
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290652
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