I could have told you that.

Most of the college students who got the mumps in a big outbreak in 2006 had received the recommended two vaccine shots, according to a study that raises questions about whether a new vaccine or another booster shot is needed. The outbreak was the biggest in the U.S. since shortly before states began requiring a second shot for youngsters in 1990.

Nearly 6,600 people became sick with the mumps, mostly in eight Midwest states, and the hardest-hit group was college students ages 18 to 24. Of those in that group who knew whether they had been vaccinated, 84 percent had had two mumps shots, according to the study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments.

That "two-dose vaccine failure" startled public health experts, who hadn't expected immunity to wane so soon — if at all.

Part of the problem was a new strain of the vaccine that these young people hadn't been vaccinated against.

But beyond that is the fact that the vaccine does not confer lifetime immunity.

And i speak from experience.

You see, i was one of the test subjects for the vaccine back in the 1960s. My family lived in Maryland at the time, and my brother and I were a part of one of the trials of the new vaccine.in late 1965 or early 1966. Several years later, around 1972 or 1973, I got mumps. Since we were now in northern Virginia, my parents took me back to the Naval Hospital at Bethesda -- and in the middle of the night I had a dozen doctors in lab coats standing around me, poking, prodding, and drawing blood. They were members of the original research team from NIH (also located in Bethesda), and having me on site let them check out how much immunity the vaccine conferred and whether it reduced the severity or durration of the disease. It didn't.

i don't know what changes were made over the years, but to hear that the immunity was not entirely effective sure doesn't surprise me.

Posted by: Greg at 10:44 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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