News media portrayal of vaccine changed quickly following report of adverse event.(Brief Article)

2002 APR 10 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- News media coverage about vaccines can shift abruptly from positive to negative in response to scientific research and public health reports about adverse events, according to an article in the March 20, 2002 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

M. Carolina Danovaro-Holliday, MD, Allison L. Wood, MPH, and Charles W. LeBaron, MD, of the National Immunization Program, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined the character of media stories about rotavirus vaccine before and after the association of the vaccine with intussusception (a potentially life-threatening intestinal blockage in young children) became an issue. The researchers evaluated what prompted the stories, and assessed the extent to which they evoked public reaction.

According to background information in the article, in August 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensed the first vaccine against rotavirus, the most important cause of severe childhood diarrhea (globally about 1 in 200 children born each year die of rotavirus diarrhea, and a substantial number of children born in the United States each year are hospitalized because of it). Fourteen months later, amid intense media activity, the vaccine was withdrawn after an association was found with intussusception (JAMA, 2002; 287:1455-1462).

The researchers searched Lexis-Nexis and Video Monitoring Services of America databases for rotavirus vaccine stories from the first U.S. clinical trials (January 1, 1987) until 17 months after withdrawal (March 31, 2001) and examined calls to the National Immunization Hotline during the period in which rotavirus vaccine information was captured (July 1-December 31, 1999).

For the study, the authors included 280 newspaper, 49 wire service, and 257 television stories. "Prior to identification of the intussusception association (January 1, ...