gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: ?The availability of data on the vaccination status of the German adult population has improved in recent years but is still fragmented. The vaccination surveillance based on data from statutory health insurances by the Robert Koch-Institute (RKI) and various surveys are the main sources that provide information about vaccination uptake but lack complimentary data that provide more insight into health related factors [1], [2]. As part of the German National Cohort (NAKO), data on the vaccination status of the study participants were collected in 18 study centers from 2014 to 2019. This work aims to compare the vaccination uptake in participants of the NAKO with published evidence to consider possible deviations.

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Methods: Tetanus and pertussis vaccination uptakes among NAKO participants were computed for five- and ten-year periods based on scanned vaccination documents. They were stratified by sociodemographic and health-related variables, e.g., sex/gender, age groups, location of the NAKO study center, presence of chronic disease. The NAKO vaccination uptakes were then compared descriptively to published values. A literature search identified publications of the RKI vaccination surveillance (based on insurance data) and surveys on infection control by the Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA, based on self-reported vaccination uptake) as most suitable sources for comparisons in the respective years.

Preliminary results: For examination year 2014, with vaccination information of 1,667 participants, NAKO tetanus vaccination uptake within a five-year period (2009-2014) is lower than the one calculated by the BZgA (41% vs. 82%) [3]. Ten-year tetanus vaccination uptake among NAKO study participants ranges between 68%-70% for the years 2016 to 2019 (n ranging from 89 to 4,175). The ten-year tetanus vaccination uptakes reported by the RKI are generally lower in the range of 51-53%. However, the temporal trend from 2016 to 2019 is similar to the NAKO [4]. The five-year NAKO pertussis vaccination uptake (2009-2014) is higher than the pertussis vaccination uptake calculated by the BZgA (30% vs. 23%) (3). Similar to the NAKO tetanus vaccination uptakes, the ten-year pertussis uptakes from examination year 2016 to 2019 (42%-49%) are higher than the vaccination uptakes according to the RKI surveillance (32%-42%) [4].

Conclusion: We observed differences between nationwide five-year vaccination uptakes reported by the BZgA compared to the ones in NAKO. The same applies to the ten-year vaccination uptakes published by the RKI. These results have to be evaluated in depth and indicate that possible deviations have to be taken into account when working with NAKO vaccination data. The RKI vaccination surveillance can be considered the gold standard to track vaccination uptake in the German population, whereas the NAKO data can serve for complimentary purposes that require additional health characteristics.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that a positive ethics committee vote has been obtained.