Author(s)

Tamie Sugawara^1*, Yasushi Ohkusa¹, Miwako Kamei²

¹National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, Japan.
²School of Pharmacy, Nihon University, Chiba, Japan.

In Japan, herpes zoster is not monitored officially or nationwide. Recently, the databases of all electronic medical claims nationwide (NDBEMC) have been available for research. We use NDBEMC from April 2011 to March 2015. To evaluate the effects of initiation of routine immunization for varicella in children, we regressed the number of herpes zoster patients on the dummy variable for the routine immunization for varicella in children with and without a linear time trend. The estimated coefficient for the routine immunization for varicella was 0.5157 and its p-value was 0.001. However, if the time trend was added as an explanatory variable, the estimated coefficient for the routine immunization for varicella changed to be -0.039 and its p-value was 0.384. It means that the routine immunization for varicella was 7.8% higher after introduction than before. However, it was presumed to reflect such an upward trend.

National Database of Electronic Medical Claims, Herpes Zoster, Routine Immunization, Varicella

Sugawara, T. , Ohkusa, Y. and Kamei, M. (2018) Effect of the Routine Varicella Immunization on Herpes Zoster in Japan in the First Half of the Year. Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, 6, 30-36. doi: 10.4236/jbm.2018.611004.