Midwest Mumps Outbreak Continues
Posted on April 24, 2006
Newsweek has a special web feature on the outbreak of mumps in the Midwest. The disease is also threatening to spread outside of the Midwest. So far Iowa has been the hardest hit with over 800 cases.
The fact that the travelers touched down mainly in the Midwest probably explains why that region is suffering the most. (Coincidentally, the last big mumps epidemic, in the 1980s, also centered on the Midwest.) So far, Iowa has been hit the hardest; it would only see five mumps cases in a normal year, but the state accounts for more than 800 of this year's 1,100-odd victims. In Waterloo, Iowa, Buschkamp's hometown of about 70,000 people, even the mayor has the mumps. Kansas, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Indiana and Nebraska have all also confirmed that the same mumps strain is circulating there.There is no cure for the mumps so the only weapons are "bed rest, fluids, painkillers" and time as the Newsweek article suggests. However, there is a vaccine that kids are supposed to receive and that adults who have not been vaccinated can get. The CDC has a Mumps fact sheet that includes information about the vaccine and answers to other common questions. The CDC website also has a Mumps page with more information including the symptoms, possible complications and transmission.The outbreak started with older victims and can target people of any age--Sharon Watson of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment says her state has seen cases "from age 5 to age 90"--but it has largely hit young, otherwise healthy college students. Almost 35 percent of the early cases occurred in 19-year-olds. Mumps is spread by coughing and sneezing, and victims also are contagious for three days before they develop symptoms, so the close quarters of college are a naturally vulnerable site for the virus to spread. "This happened on spring break, and it's very easy to unwittingly spread it," Watson says. If the disease hasn't retreated by summer, kids leaving school could cause another wave of infection in parts of the country that thus far remain unaffected.
Once a rite of passage in childhood, mumps was largely tamped down in the 1960s with the advent of a vaccine, and it hasn't been a major public health problem for two decades. Epidemiologists think several factors may have caused its return. On is that the measles, mumps and rubella shot needs to be given twice in order to be most effective, and some parents are neglecting to take their child in for the second treatment. Another is that some parents, responding to fears that the vacines could be linked to autism, are simply not getting the shots at all for their children. "Lots of pediatricians have bemoaned the fact that parents are either not paying attention or [are] actually opposed to vaccination," says Dr. John Baldwin, president of the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, a Harvard-affiliated immunology center. Many states require full double vaccination for entry into any state school, but a significant number of students in Iowa started college before that requirement took effect in the early 1990s. And even double vaccination doesn't take care of everything; about 10 percent of kids who go through it still end up getting mumps.