"Vaccines for preventing plague - T Jefferson, V Demicheli, M Pratt
"Plague is endemic in China, Mongolia, Burma, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, large parts of Southern Africa, the United States and South America. There are three types of vaccines (live attenuated, killed and F1 fraction) with varying means of administration.
"The objective of this review was to assess the effects of vaccines to prevent plague.
"We searched Medline (1966 to March 2006), Embase (1985 to March 2006), CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library 2006, Issue 1) and reference lists of articles. We handsearched the journal 'Vaccine' (up to 1997) and contacted experts in the field.
"Randomised trials comparing live and killed plague vaccines against no intervention, placebo, other plague vaccines or vaccines against other disease (control vaccines).
"Three reviewers assessed the eligibility of trials.
Authors' conclusions
There is not enough evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of any plague vaccine, or the relative effectiveness between vaccines and their tolerability. Circumstantial data from observational studies suggest that killed types may be more effective and have fewer adverse effects than attenuated types of vaccine." No evidence appears to exist on the long-term effects of any plague vaccine. [Conclusion: no proof that the vaccine even works! - bfg]
http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD000976/frame.html