OBJECTIVE To explore the reasons why North Carolina families continue to use public immunization services 2 years after implementation of a universal vaccine purchase program, a state program intended to eliminate financial barriers to immunization in private physicians' offices. METHODS In-person interviews were conducted in 11 local public health departments in North Carolina. PARTICIPANT...

BACKGROUND The CDC established a national objective to create population-based tracking of immunizations through regional and statewide registries nearly 2 decades ago, and these registries have increased coverage rates and reduced duplicate immunizations. With increased adoption of commercial electronic medical records (EMR), some institutions have used unidirectional links to send immunizatio...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of breastfeeding on the risk for fever after routine immunizations. METHODS A prospective cohort study was conducted at a pediatric vaccination center in Naples, Italy. The mothers of the infants scheduled to receive routine immunizations were instructed on how to measure and record infant temperature on the evening of the vacc...

Effective immunotherapies for HIV are needed. Drug therapies are life-long with significant toxicities. Dendritic-cell based immunotherapy approaches are promising but impractical for widespread use. A simple immunotherapy, reinfusing fresh autologous blood cells exposed to overlapping SIV peptides for 1 hour ex vivo, was assessed for the control of SIV(mac251) replication in 36 pigtail macaque...

We reported previously that daily injections of isophane insulin prevented both hyperglycemia and insulitis in nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice (Atkinson, M., N. Maclaren; and R. Luchetta. 1990. Diabetes. 39:933-937). The possible mechanisms responsible include reduced immunogenicity of pancreatic beta-cells from "beta-cell rest" and induced active immunoregulation to insulin (Aaen, IK., J. Rygaard...

BACKGROUND Approximately 500,000 infants are born prematurely each year in the United States. Immunization of infants in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) set a precedence for future immunizations. PURPOSES The objectives of this study were to determine the current rates of immunization and identify variables associated with immunizations of NICU graduates who were aged 60 days or older a...

Community pharmacy-based provision of immunizations in the USA has become commonplace in the last few decades, with success in increasing rates of immunizations. Community pharmacy-based vaccination services are provided by pharmacists educated in the practice of immunization delivery and provide a convenient and accessible option for receiving immunizations. The pharmacist's role in immunizati...

Immunizations with the oncogenic protein Her-2/neu elicit Abs exerting diverse biological effects--depending on epitope specificity, tumor growth may be inhibited or enhanced. Trastuzumab (herceptin) is a growth-inhibitory humanized monoclonal anti-Her-2/neu Ab, currently used for passive immunotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer. However, Ab therapies are expensive and have to be repeate...

BEC2 is an anti-idiotypic mouse monoclonal antibody that mimics GD3 ganglioside. Previous clinical trials demonstrated that intradermal immunization using 2.5 mg of BEC2 with BCG or i.v. immunization with 10 mg of BEC2 can induce anti-GD3 antibodies in a subset of patients. We hypothesized that combining these two immunization strategies might be more effective in inducing anti-GD3 antibodies a...

OBJECTIVE To quantify both the individual-level and attributable risk of varicella infection requiring medical care in children whose parents refuse varicella immunizations. DESIGN Matched case-control study with conditional logistic regression analysis. SETTING Kaiser Permanente of Colorado (KPCO) health plan between 1998 and 2008. PARTICIPANTS Each pediatric physician-diagnosed case of ...