Vaccine

Background:No comparative review of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) submissions following pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 and seasonal influenza vaccinations during the pandemic season among U.S. military personnel has been published.Methods:We compared military vs. civilian adverse event reporting rates. Adverse events (AEs) following vaccination were identified from VAERS for adults aged 17\u201344 years after pandemic (monovalent influenza [MIV], and seasonal (trivalent inactivated influenza [IIV3], live attenuated influenza [LAIV3]) vaccines. Military vaccination coverage was provided by the Department of Defense\u2019s Defense Medical Surveillance System. Civilian vaccination coverage was estimated using data from the National 2009 H1N1 Flu Survey and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey.Results:Vaccination coverage was more than four times higher for MIV and more than twenty times higher for LAIV3 in the military than in the civilian population. The reporting rate of serious AE reports following MIV in service personnel (1.19 per 100,000) was about half that reported by the civilian population (2.45 per 100,000). Conversely, the rate of serious AE reports following LAIV3 among service personnel (1.32 per 100,000) was more than twice that of the civilian population. Although fewer military AEs following MIV were reported overall, the rate of Guillain\u2013Barr\ue9 Syndrome (GBS) (4.01 per million) was four times greater than that in the civilian population. (1.04 per million).Conclusions:Despite higher vaccination coverage in service personnel, the rate of serious AEs following MIV was about half that in civilians. The rate of GBS reported following MIV was higher in the military.20162019-04-15T00:00:00ZCC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States27449076PMC6463880727