Objectives: We investigated the seroprevalence of the measles antibody and its attributable factors for the students who underwent routine 2-dose Schedule Era.
Methods: The subjects were 996 students of the national measles seroepidemiologic study in December 2000 who had vaccination records. We conducted a questionnaire survey and we performed serologic testing for the measles-specific IgG by using an enzyme linked immunosorbent assay.
Results: The coverage for the first dose of the MMR vaccination at 12-15 months of age was 95.1% and the coverage for the second dose of MMR at 4-6 years of age was 35.0%. The proportion of subjects undergoing 2-doses of MMR decreased as the age of the subjects increased. The seropositive rate of the measles antibody was significantly high in the second dose vaccinees (93.5% in the second dose group, 84.7% in the non-second dose group, p<0.001) and it was 72.0% in the 0-dose group, 85.4% in the 1-dose group and 93.7% in the 2-dose group (p<0.001). Two point eight percent of the subjects had a past history of measles infection. On the multiple logistic regression analysis, the first and second dose (odds ratio, 8.54; 95% CI.=3.05-23.91), the first dose (odds ratio, 3.06; 95% CI.=1.20-7.81) and the outbreak in the year 2000 (odds ratio, 1.89; 95% CI.=1.24-2.88) were the significant factors for the seropositivity.
Conclusions: Maintaining high coverage with a 2-dose vaccination program would be the decisive factor to prevent an outbreak of measles and to eliminate measles in Korea.