PEDIATRICS Vol. 107 No. 3 March 2001, pp. 611-612
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To the Editor.
In the December 1999 issue of Pediatrics, Cherry and Olin criticized the Munich study, in which we investigated the efficacy of the 2-component Biken acellular pertussis vaccine using a nested case-control study design.1 On the basis of the results of this and previously published studies, the Biken acellular pertussis vaccine has been licensed in 1995 in Germany and in 1996 in the United States as the first acellular pertussis vaccine for use in infants. Cherry and Olin held that the efficacy values were inflated "due to the study design (case-control), the lack of serological diagnosis, the lack of a case definition, which included mild illness and the almost certain observer bias, because there was no prospective surveillance." We regret that Cherry and Olin misread some of the basic facts of the study design, and we feel that the readers of Pediatrics deserve a rebuttal to their errors of interpretation.