No difference in safety has been observed between children with cancer and healthy children. In the case of poliomyelitis, it has been found that the prevalence of children with preserved protective antibody levels after the completion of chemotherapy is 62–100% [3] and [10]. Moreover, most patients respond to revaccination, thus demonstrating immunological recovery [3] and [24]. This means that, although cellular immune memory is preserved, revaccination

after the completion of chemotherapy may be warranted as a simple and cost-effective means of restoring humoral immunity. All of the studies of poliomyelitis revaccination in oncological children used inactivated poliovirus vaccine because of the potential risk of acute flaccid paralysis due to live attenuated poliovirus

vaccine [3], [10] and [24]. The selleck compound safety profile of the inactivated vaccine seems to be optimal in such patients and similar to that observed in healthy children. However, some years ago, during a nationwide vaccination campaign using of live attenuated poliovirus vaccine, it was found that children with cancer were well-protected against unintended exposure to live polioviruses and there RGFP966 mw was no risk of adverse neurological events [43]. Like other encapsulated bacteria, Hib may cause life-threatening diseases in children with cancer [44] and [45] and, probably because it is the oldest conjugate vaccine, it has been widely studied in such children [24], [46], [47], [48], [49] and [50]. Although there are also some data concerning children with solid tumours [46], most of these studies involved patients with ALL who were vaccinated at various times after discontinuing chemotherapy [24], [47], [48], [49] and [50]. others Regardless of their previous immunisation status, most of the children responded

adequately: short- or long-term protective antibody levels were almost always reached, even when the vaccine was given only 1 month after they had completed chemotherapy. However, the best results were obtained when the revaccination was administered 3 months after the end of chemotherapy [50]. The safety and tolerability of Hib vaccine has always seemed to be very good [24], [46], [47], [48], [49] and [50]. Patients with cancer are at risk of invasive pneumococcal infection but it has been demonstrated that the conjugate 7-valent (PCV7), conjugate 13-valent (PCV13) and polysaccharide 23-valent (PPV23) pneumococcal vaccines respectively cover more than 75%, 80% and 90% of the known serotypes [51]. Only a few studies of the use of pneumococcal vaccines in patients with cancer have been published. However, it is well known that, despite its greater coverage of pneumococcal serotypes, PPV23 is not very immunogenic in the first years of life [52]; moreover, none of the pneumococcal conjugate vaccines is currently licensed for use in subjects who are older than 5 years.