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medpundit |
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Saturday, May 25, 2002Whooping Cough Ascendant: People who make it their business to track infectious disease trends around the world say that whooping cough is on the rise. Some speculate that this is because of waning immunity from the shot, others that the pertussis bacteria is becoming more clever at evading the immune system. One factor that isn’t mentioned explicitly in the article is the use since 1996 of the acellular pertussis vaccine instead of the whole cell vaccine. The pertussis vaccine is made of pertussis bacteria that have been killed. In the case of the whole cell vaccine, the whole dead bacterial cell is used. In the acellular version, just parts of the bacteria that are believed to be responsible for provoking immunity are used. The whole cell vaccine has more side effects than the acellular version, which in initial studies was found to be just as efficacious as the whole cell version. It made sense to switch to an acellular vaccine that would have fewer side effects while providing the same protection. The studies of its efficacy, however, were limited to infants. No studies were done to see how its immunity lasted into adulthood. This could very well be why our immunity is waning. The other factor, that is discussed in the article, is the shortage of pertussis vaccine. Normally, a child would get three doses of pertussis vaccine in the first year of life, one in the second year, and a fifth dose just prior to going to kindergarten. Thanks to vaccine shortages, we’re only giving the first three doses right now. This leaves a host of young children in daycare and public schools with waning immunity and a perfect environment to spread pertussis around. Vaccine manufacturing evidently isn’t all that profitable for drug companies, and fewer and fewer of them are doing it. We have shortages in this country of diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, and influenza vaccines. It’s a public health matter that needs to be urgently addressed by the CDC, but one that it continues to ignore beyond making recommendations for delaying immunizations. It would be a far better thing for our congressional leaders and public health officials to concern themselves with insuring vaccine availability to the American public than to concern themselves with obesity, mammograms and the latest celebrity disease. Is anyone out there listening? posted by Sydney on 5/25/2002 01:52:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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