Vaccine Development Editing and Proofreading Services

"Ninety-five percent effective" is the phrase that leaves the building, and it travels without the conditions that produced it. In the trial report the same result appears as a relative reduction in symptomatic infection, in adults aged 18 to 64, over a median follow-up of two months, with a confidence interval running from 90.3 to 97.6. By the time the figure reaches a press release, then a fact sheet, then a broadcast, the endpoint, the population, the period, and the interval have all fallen away. What is left is a number many readers take to mean that 95 of every 100 vaccinated people are protected.

The documents we edit for Vaccine Development

Efficacy and effectiveness result descriptions sit at the center of this work. Clinical trial reports and their summaries come with them, along with regulatory submission summaries and briefing documents. Safety and reactogenicity communications reach us often, as do product information and prescribing documents and public-facing explanations of results. The work extends to immunization program material for professionals, risk communication for rare adverse events, real-world effectiveness studies and the reports behind them, and scientific publications and conference material. Our editors work on the number that will be quoted elsewhere without its conditions.

What the editing involves

The qualifiers belong inside the sentence carrying the number rather than in a footnote below it. "Ninety-five percent efficacy against symptomatic disease in adults aged 18 to 64, over a median of two months of follow-up" is one line longer than the bare figure and survives being quoted. The bare figure does not survive being quoted, because a quotation is where the conditions get dropped. Which endpoint, which population, and which period apply are settled by the sponsor's clinical and regulatory teams, and they reach us decided.

Relative and absolute measures read differently and belong together on the page. A fall from 2.0 percent to 0.1 percent is a 95 percent relative reduction and a 1.9 percentage point absolute one, and a reader given only the first forms a different impression than a reader given both. We do not choose which measure a sponsor leads with. Where both figures exist in the statistical report, we check that both reach the summary, that each is labeled as what it is, and that the same pairing appears in the abstract, the press material, and the fact sheet.

Protection of the recipient and protection of other people rest on different evidence, and the drafts we edit routinely merge the two into a single clause. Where a sponsor holds transmission data, that data carries its own endpoint and its own interval, and it belongs in a sentence of its own. Waning is handled the same way. Where follow-up beyond the primary period exists, a later figure of 78 percent at six months, carried with the date it was measured, is more use to a reader than a repetition of the original 95.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including trial data, submissions, and unpublished results. We are editors, not immunologists, epidemiologists, or public health advisors, and we offer no opinion on efficacy, safety, or policy. What we can do is keep the conditions attached to the number when it travels.