Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Meta-Anal. Jun 26, 2015; 3(3): 151-162
Published online Jun 26, 2015. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v3.i3.151
Effectiveness of 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine: A meta-analysis of post-marketing studies
Chiara de Waure, Maria Lucia Specchia, Silvio Capizzi, Mufida Aljicevic, Milos Dujovic, Admir Malaj, Walter Ricciardi
Chiara de Waure, Maria Lucia Specchia, Silvio Capizzi, Walter Ricciardi, Institute of Public Health, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, 00168 Rome, Italy
Mufida Aljicevic, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sarajevo, 71000 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Milos Dujovic, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
Admir Malaj, Faculty of Pharmacy, Medical University of Tirana, 1001 Tirana, Albania
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this work.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Maria Lucia Specchia, MD, MPH, PhD, Institute of Public Health, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, L.go F. Vito 1, 00168 Rome, Italy. marialucia.specchia@rm.unicatt.it
Telephone: +39-6-30154396 Fax: +39-6-35001522
Received: July 28, 2014
Peer-review started: July 30, 2014
First decision: December 17, 2014
Revised: April 22, 2015
Accepted: May 16, 2015
Article in press: May 18, 2015
Published online: June 26, 2015
Processing time: 336 Days and 19.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: This systematic review and meta-analysis was performed with the aim to collect data from post-marketing studies on 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) and to provide evidence about the impact of the vaccine in the real world. Eligible articles were identified through a search on PubMed and Scopus. The meta-analysis showed that PCV7 is able to reduce invasive pneumococcal diseases due to both vaccine serotypes and to all serotypes. The effectiveness was 84% (95%CI: 74%-90%) and 53% (95%CI: 46%-59%) respectively. These data may be taken into consideration in order to foresee the impact under real conditions of PCV13 which has replaced PCV7 from 2010 onwards.