title: A systematic review of human-to-human transmission of measles vaccine virus.
abstract: Measles is one of the most contagious human diseases. Administration of the live attenuated measles vaccine has substantially reduced childhood mortality and morbidity since its licensure in 1963. The live but attenuated form of the vaccine describes a virus poorly adapted to replicating in human tissue, but with a replication yield sufficient to elicit an immune response for long-term protection. Given the high transmissibility of the wild-type virus and that transmission of other live vaccine viruses has been documented, we conducted a systematic review to establish if there is any evidence of human-to-human transmission of the live attenuated measles vaccine virus. We reviewed 773 articles for genotypic confirmation of a vaccine virus transmitted from a recently vaccinated individual to a susceptible close contact. No evidence of human-to-human transmission of the measles vaccine virus has been reported amongst the thousands of clinical samples genotyped during outbreaks or endemic transmission and individual case studies worldwide.
authors.affiliation: UQ Child Health Research Centre, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Kathryn P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Greenwood
authors.affiliation: Drug Department, Saudi Food and Drug Authority, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Radwan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hafiz
authors.affiliation: UQ Child Health Research Centre, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; School of Public Health, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Robert S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Ware
authors.affiliation: UQ Child Health Research Centre, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Communicable Diseases Branch, Queensland Health, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Electronic address: sblambert@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Stephen B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Lambert
mesh_terms: D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D008457:Measles / Q000635:transmission*; D008458:Measles Vaccine / Q000009:adverse effects*; D008459:Measles virus; D014613:Vaccines, Attenuated / Q000009:adverse effects
chemical_list: D008458:Measles Vaccine; D014613:Vaccines, Attenuated
keywords: Genotype; Measles; RT-PCR; Transmission; Vaccine