Study Estimates Mortality Reductions Associated with Vaccination for 8 Major Viruses

In a recent study, Dr S Jay Olshansky, of the Chicago School of Public Health at the University of Illinois, and Dr Leonard Hayflick of the University of California in San Francisco, estimated the number of cases of and deaths from 8 viruses averted due to vaccines based upon the WI-38 cell strain and its derivatives, developed by Hayflick in 1962.

The authors estimated deaths from and cases of poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, adenovirus, rabies, and hepatitis A infections, and selected the year 1960 as a single frame of reference for estimating the impact of vaccines on public health. To assess the hypothetical impact of vaccine dissemination on vaccine-preventable cases and deaths, the prevalence rates and disease-specific deaths were held constant from 1960 to 2015.
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Olshansky and Hayfield found that the estimated total number of cases of poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, adenovirus, rabies, and hepatitis A averted or treated in the United States alone was 198 million after the introduction of vaccines. In addition, approximately 450,000 deaths in the US were averted.

“Although it is not possible to generate precise global estimates of cases and deaths averted due to the use of vaccines based exclusively on the WI-38 cell strain or its derivatives, a rough approximation may be obtained by assuming (very conservatively) that the prevalence rates and death rates for these diseases observed in the US apply equally to the entire human population,” the researchers noted. Under this assumption, the total number of prevented cases was about 4.5 billion globally, while the total number of deaths averted was about 10.3 million globally.

—Melissa Weiss

Reference:

Olshansky SJ, and Hayflick L. The role of the WI-38 cell strain in saving lives and reducing morbidity [published online March 2, 2017]. AIMS Public Health. doi: 10.3934/publichealth.2017.2.127.