Comparison of the adverse effect of PCEC and Vero rabies vaccine in a double blind clinical trial

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended the cell culture based rabies vaccines that have no significant side effects. Vero is a type of cell culture based vaccine which is used for human rabies vaccination in Iran. Because Vero is produced by a single source provider other cell-culture derived vaccines, PCEC, has recently been used for vaccination.
In this double blind clinical trial study 1449 people bitten by animals (279 females) were recruited from 4 different cities of Iran and randomly assigned to receive Vero and PCEC vaccine in 5-dose regimen. The local and systemic adverse reactions to both of two vaccines were reported by the patients and confirmed by a physician.
The most common local adverse reaction in both groups was pain at the injection site (4%). Most of the reported systemic adverse reaction was headache (2.5%) and fever (1.9%) in PCEC and VERO group, respectively. The percentage of subjects had itching after vaccination was fewer In PCEC group than VERO group (0.1% vs. 1%) (p The result of the present study indicated that PCEC administered to people bitten by animals associated with fewer itching at the injection site. There was no significant difference between PCEC and VERO vaccine considering local and systemic adverse reaction. Therefore the PCEC vaccine can be administered instead of Vero, when the country encounters serious challenges in Vero vaccine supply.