Four hundred nineteen children and adolescents immunized with live varicella vaccine 4-6 years earlier were enrolled in a study to evaluate the safety and immune response to a booster dose containing approximately 3300 pfu of virus. Of the subjects, 99% (414/419) maintained antibody to varicella zoster virus (VZV) with a geometric mean titer of 25.7 and mean stimulation index (SI) for VZV-specific lymphoproliferation response of 40.3 +/- 5.3 (SE). Some 7-10 days after the booster immunization, seropositivity rates increased to 100% (302/302), and GMT was 143.6 (anamnestic response). At 6 weeks after the booster inoculation, a subset of subjects had 100% seropositivity (74/74) with a GMT of 218.8 and an SI of 58.6. After 3 months, seropositivity was 100% (358/358), GMT was 119.0, and SI was 61.4.

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NS-SP are highly prevalent in urban and rural Nebraska. PFGE similarities between serotypes may reflect "serotype switching" but may also reflect genetic similarity between S. pneumoniae strains.

Pertussis is well controlled in the United States by routine childhood immunization. In contrast, this disease is endemic and epidemic in Germany because routine immunization has not been implemented. To gain information relating to the epidemiology of Bordetella pertussis infections, we examined the prevalence and magnitude of B. pertussis agglutinins and of IgG and IgA antibodies (detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) to four B. pertussis antigens--lymphocytosis-promoting factor, filamentous hemagglutinin, pertactin, and fimbriae-2--in the sera of 119 American university students and 119 German military recruits of similar age. Geometric mean titers of agglutinins and geometric mean values for IgG antibodies to the four antigens were two- to threefold higher in sera from the American students than in sera from German recruits. In contrast, the geometric mean IgA values and the percentage of subjects with detectable IgA antibodies to the four antigens were similar in the two populations. Since IgA antibody results mainly from infection and not from immunization, our data suggest that B. pertussis infections are common among both American and German young adults despite the marked difference in rates of clinical pertussis in the two countries.