OVAE: Ontology of Vaccine Adverse Events

     Vaccination is one of the most effective approaches in preventing humans and domesitic animals against infectious diseases. Many vaccines have been commercially used in the market. While they are extremely useful in decreasing infection prevalence in human populations, vaccines may also induce some unintended adverse events. As vaccine usage increases, the risk of adverse events proportionally increases. To protect public health, it is necessary to represent, study, and analyze various vaccine adverse events (VAES).

     Two existing ontologies are closely related to the VAE studies. The Ontology of Adverse Events (OAE) is a community-based biomedical ontology in the area of adverse events. The Vaccine Ontology (VO) represents various vaccines, vaccine components, and vaccinations. Both OAE and VO are OBO Foundry candidate ontologies and are developed by following the OBO Foundry principles.

     To better represent various VAEs and support vaccine safety study, we developed the Ontology of Vaccine Adverse Events (OVAE) as an extension of the biomedical ontologies OAE and VO.