Got your shots?

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Given the craziness of certain people and their insane beliefs that vaccinations should be withheld from their children, it is not surprising that we are experiencing widespread increases in diseases that were once considered to be virtually eradicated.  I won’t even go into the senseless epidemic of flu that is enveloping us.

And, now, to protect infants, ones way too young to be inoculated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has developed a new recommendation. (OK.  The panel recommended this in October, but it was published in January.)  Pregnant women should be vaccinated EVERY time they get pregnant for whooping cough, during their third trimester.  This is how they can protect their child(ren) from the disease that is more prevalent now than any time since 1959.

This highly contagious disease is spread via coughing and/or sneezing.  But, 30%-40% of newborns actually contract the disease from their mothers.   Half of these infants need hospitalization, 20% of them develop pneumonia, and 1% succumb.

Pertussis became known as “whooping cough” because air is expelled from the infected one’s lungs (via persistent, violent, and rapid coughs) and then air is gulped in (inhaled), which  develops that loud, whooping sound that is characteristic of the disease.  This cough typically persists for weeks.

Normally, one only receives the vaccination once during their lifetime.  But, with the upswing (41000 cases in 2012, twice the prevalence in 2011) and 18 deaths, the CDC feels that protection for babies younger than 3 months is now critical.

The Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis [whooping cough]) vaccine should be administered to pregnant women between their 27th and 36th week of gestation.  Given the inoculation, the mother will develop the appropriate antibodies immediately.  These antibodies would be transferred to the baby, in utero, giving it sufficient immunity to withstand whooping cough bacterial invasions, until the infant itself can be inoculated, after it reaches at least 3 months of age.  (Breast feeding will also afford the infant immunity to the disease, if the mother had been recently inoculated.)  In addition, children should be re-inoculated right before teen years (11-12) and then again as adults, because we now know that the immunity to pertussis evanesces over time (10 years of immunity is about it).

There is a conflict between the CDC recommendation and the US FDA regulations.  The FDA has only approved the drug for one time administration; however that does not preclude physician administration beyond that level.

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6 thoughts on “Got your shots?”

  1. I agree with you Roy. There is a similar increase in cases of measles in the UK and I believe that can be put down to the scare over the safety of the rubella injection…
    Caro Ness recently posted..Words

  2. My kids are all up to date on their inoculations, but I must admit that I do sometimes question either the safety or the necessity of so many vaccinations. An interesting post about whooping cough. I knew it was on the rise, but was not aware that pregnant women were being advised to vaccinate against it.
    Suerae Stein recently posted..The Imagination&#8230; Friend or Foe?</p>

    1. Suerae-
      Neither are most folks, which is why I posted this new information.
      But, if we wish to eradicate many of these diseases, that can only happen with inoculations. Think what would have happened to you- if your parents decided they would not inoculate you against polio. (By the way, that vaccine was – at our ages- more dangerous than any we offer our children now. But, it made a large difference for the US.)

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