BACKGROUND: The JYNNEOS vaccine (two doses given 28 days apart) was recommended in the United States for people at high risk of exposure to monkeypox virus during the 2022 mpox outbreak. Our objective was to assess the safety of JYNNEOS using two complementary epidemiologic methods.
METHODS: This observational cohort included patients of eight large integrated healthcare organizations who received JYNNEOS. Adverse events were identified using ICD-10 coded diagnoses assigned to medical visits. The first analysis used standardized incidence ratios (SIR) to compare the observed incidence of ten prespecified adverse events of special interest (AESI) during the 28 days after receipt of each dose of JYNNEOS to the expected incidence adjusted for several risk factors. The second analysis used tree-based data mining to identify temporal clustering of cases for more than 60,000 diagnoses and diagnosis groups within 70-days after JYNNEOS dose 1 administration.
RESULTS: The SIR analysis included 53,583 adults who received JYNNEOS dose 1 and 38,206 who received dose 2. Males received 92% of the doses. There were no statistically significant elevated SIRs for any of the ten AESI. The tree-based data mining analysis included 36,912 vaccinees. Analysis of diagnoses in inpatient, emergency department, and outpatient settings identified statistically significant clusters of visits for rash and unspecified adverse effects.
CONCLUSIONS: No new or unexpected safety concerns were identified. AESI did not occur more frequently than expected by chance alone. Non-serious medically attended adverse events, such as rash, have been previously reported and occurred infrequently.