Australian adults at high risk of mumps
POSTED October 20, 2008 - 14:34 | POSTED BY Jyoti Pal
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on October 20, 2008 - 14:54
Sydney, October 20: Encountering an unexpected rise in the number of young adults contracting the mumps virus, Australia’s National Centre for Immunization Research and Surveillance on Sunday urged people aged 25 to 30 to get the recommended second vaccination shot.
As the effects of the vaccine-acquired immunity are not as strong and long lasting as disease-acquired immunity, the second dose provides added protection, researchers explain.
The number of reported cases increasing almost tenfold, from 60 in 2002 to 512 last year, currently the virus is typically afflicting people born between 1978 and 1982, probably due to the absence of proper vaccinations during childhood.
"Both the waning of vaccine-acquired immunity and the accumulation of unvaccinated cohorts over time appear to have contributed to an increased susceptibility among young adults," Professor Peter McIntyre, Director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance of Vaccine Preventable Diseases wrote in The Medical Journal of Australia.
"For now, the priority should be to target young adults, particularly those born during the late 1970s and early 1980s and now aged 25-30 years, for a second dose of MMR (measles-mumps-rubella vaccine)" McIntyre averred.
Mumps, a highly contagious viral infection is one of the most common childhood diseases. The condition is typically characterized with painful swelling of the salivary glands, fever and headache.
Generally self-limiting, the condition runs its course before receding. However, severe and prolonged infections raise the risk of developing meningitis (inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord), encephalitisdefine (inflammation of the brain) and pancreatitis (abdominal paindefine
and vomiting). The infection is hardly fatal, though two men have died of mumps since 1998.While the symptoms of the disease are generally not severe in children, the infection if acquired in adolescence or adulthood causes painful testicular inflammation that could trigger infertility in men. In pregnant women it can cause spontaneous abortion.
The only preventive measure against mumps is immunization with a mumps vaccine. The vaccine may be administered separately or as part of the MMR immunization vaccine which also protects against measles and rubella. While the first jab is administered to children around the age of one year, the second dose is given around the age of 5 years.
