Max Weisman

Abstract:

A new chlamydia intervention appears to be on the horizon as the CTH-522 vaccine candidate has seen success in preliminary trials, bringing the possibility of a serious reduction, or even elimination, of chlamydia. To investigate its impact, we developed autonomous and non-autonomous compartmental models of chlamydia transmission in New York State, which accounts for vaccination, to evaluate the health benefits and cost-effectiveness of a vaccination intervention with the CTH-522 vaccine. We considered intervention scenarios with vaccination rates from 0.01625/year to 0.52/year, and estimated incidences averted, disability adjusted life-years saved, and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio over five years. Our findings show that such interventions save up to 10,742 disability adjusted life-years and avert 146,936 incidences in New York State. We found the intervention to be very cost-effective under all scenarios considered, even if the average cost per vaccination is 10 times that of the influenza vaccine. Additionally, we predict such an intervention has the potential to be more cost-effective than vaccination efforts against influenza, HPV, and gonorrhea. Thus, our results suggests that the CTH-522 vaccine candidate could have great success in reducing the health burden of chlamydia, and merits serious consideration for further human-trial investigations.