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QUESTION: In healthy children, is an intranasal influenza vaccine for the prevention of influenza cost effective?
Design
Randomised {allocation concealed*}†, blinded {patients, healthcare providers, data collectors, judicial assessors of outcomes, data analysts, data safety and monitoring committee, and manuscript writers}†,* placebo controlled trial with 2 years of follow up.
Setting
University medical centres in 7 cities in the USA.
Patients
2960 healthy children who were 15 to 71 months of age (mean age 42 mo, 52% girls). Follow up was > 97%.
Intervention
Children were allocated to receive 1 or 2 doses of a live, attenuated, trivalent, intranasal influenza vaccine (n=1987) or placebo (n=973) for the 1996–1997 and 1997–1998 seasons.
Main cost and outcome measures
Cost per febrile influenza-like illness (ILI) day avoided. A break-even analysis was also done to calculate the vaccine plus administration cost below which its …
Footnotes
↵† Information provided by author.
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Sources of funding: Aviron and National Institutes of Health.
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For correspondence: Dr B R Luce, MEDTAP International, Bethesda, MD, USA. luce{at}medtap.com.