THE LARGE SWEDISH field trial of two acellular pertussis vaccines has not shown levels of efficacy high enough to make either vaccine a likely candidate for immediate licensure in the United States.
At the same time, the trial produced evidence from follow-up studies of the disease among both vaccinees and the placebo controls that the vaccines do offer some protection against the disease.
These are the essential findings from first analysis of data becoming available from this much-discussed trial. They were reported in recent weeks at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md. There was an earlier review in Stockholm, and a preliminary report will appear in The Lancet.
The trial was an international collaborative effort between the National Bacteriological Laboratory, Stockholm; Research Foundation for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Japan; Japanese National Institute of Health; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Bethesda, Md; Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research,
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