A Missing Dimension in Measures of Vaccination Impacts

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1003849
• Publication Date: 2014-03-06T22:05:13Z
• Authors: M. Gabriela M. Gomes; Marc Lipsitch; Andrew R. Wargo; Gael Kurath; Carlota Rebelo; Graham F. Medley; Antonio Coutinho
• Keywords: Vaccine efficacy; Case fatality rate

Immunological protection, acquired from either natural infection or vaccination, varies among hosts, reflecting underlying biological variation and affecting population-level protection. Owing to the nature of resistance mechanisms, distributions susceptibility protection entangle with pathogen dose in a way that can be decoupled by adequately representing dimension. Any infectious processes must depend some fashion on dose, empirical evidence exists for an effect exposure probability transmission mumps-vaccinated hosts [1], case-fatality ratio measles [2], and, given infection, symptoms cholera [3]. Extreme vaccine have been termed leaky (partially protects all hosts) all-or-nothing (totally proportion [4]. These distinguished field trials time dependence infections [5]. Frailty mixing models also proposed estimate distribution event data [6], [7], although results are not comparable across regions unless there is explicit control baseline [8]. Distributions host estimated dose-response generated under controlled experimental conditions [9]–[11] settings [12], [13]. guide research mechanisms as well enable model validity entire range intensities. We argue shift dose-dimension paradigm disease science community health.