Pregnant? Get Tdap in Your Third Trimester

 

Only you can give your baby protection against whooping cough before your little one is even born. Talk to your doctor or midwife about getting the Tdap vaccine during your third trimester. Whooping cough is a serious disease that can be deadly for babies. Unfortunately, babies can't get vaccinated and start building protection against whooping cough until they are two months old. The good news is that you can avoid this gap in protection by getting the whooping cough vaccine (called Tdap) during the third trimester of your pregnancy. By doing so, you pass antibodies to your baby before birth. These antibodies help protect your baby in the first few months of life. You Need a Whooping Cough Vaccine during Each Pregnancy If you are pregnant, you'll need the whooping cough vaccine in your third trimester. CDC recommends pregnant women get the whooping cough vaccine between 27 and 36 weeks of each pregnancy. This recommendation is supported by theAmerican College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Nurse-Midwives, healthcare professionals who specialize in caring for pregnant women. The goal is to give babies some short-term protection against whooping cough in early life. The amount of antibodies you have from the whooping cough vaccine will decrease over time. That is why it's important for pregnant women to get a whooping cough vaccine during each pregnancy so that each baby has the benefit of getting the greatest number of protective antibodies. Getting the whooping cough vaccine while pregnant is the best way to help protect your baby from whooping cough in the first few months of life. Whooping Cough Vaccine during Pregnancy Is Safe for Your Baby Getting the whooping cough vaccine while you are pregnant is very safe for you and your unborn baby. The most common side effects include redness, swelling, pain, and tenderness where the shot is given, body-ache, fatigue, or fever. Severe side effects are extremely rare. You cannot get whooping cough from the whooping cough vaccine. Learn more about safety and side effects. Young Babies Are at Highest Risk When babies—even healthy babies—catch whooping cough, the symptoms can be very serious because their immune systems are still developing. They can get pneumonia (a lung infection), and many have trouble breathing. About half of babies who get whooping cough end up in the hospital. The younger the baby is when he gets whooping cough, the more likely it is that he will need to be treated in the hospital.   http://www.cdc.gov/features/tdap-in-pregnancy/index.html

New vaccine patch protects against flu in humans

 

The microneedle patch can dissolve in the skin, delivering the flu vaccine painlessly. Credit: Image courtesy of Prof. Shinsaku Nakagawa Flu vaccines delivered using microneedles that dissolve in the skin can protect people against infection even better than the standard needle-delivered vaccine, according to new research published in Biomaterials. The authors of the study, from Osaka University in Japan, say their dissolvable patch -- the only vaccination system of its kind -- could make vaccination easier, safer and less painful. According to the World Health Organization, immunization prevents an estimated 2-3 million deaths every year. The continued threat of pandemics such as H1N1 swine flu and emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola makes vaccine development and mass vaccination a priority for global healthcare. Most vaccines are injected under the skin or into the muscle using needles. While this is an effective delivery method, it requires medical personnel with technical skills and brings the risk of needle-related diseases and injuries. The new microneedle patch is made of dissolvable material, eliminating needle-related risks. It is also easy to use without the need for trained medical personnel, making it ideal for use in developing countries, where healthcare resources are limited. "Our novel transcutaneous vaccination using a dissolving microneedle patch is the only application vaccination system that is readily adaptable for widespread practical use," said Professor Shinsaku Nakagawa, one of the authors of the study from Osaka University. "Because the new patch is so easy to use, we believe it will be particularly effective in supporting vaccination in developing countries." The new microneedle patch -- MicroHyala -- is dissolvable in water. The tiny needles are made of hyaluronic acid, a naturally occurring substance that cushions the joints. When the patch is applied like a plaster, the needles pierce the top layer of skin and dissolve into the body, taking the vaccine with them. The researchers compared the new system to traditional needle delivery by vaccinating two groups of people against three strains of influenza: A/H1N1, A/H3N2 and B. None of the subjects had a bad reaction to the vaccine, showing that it is safe to use in humans. The patch was also effective: people given the vaccine using the microneedles had an immune reaction that was equal to or stronger than those given the vaccine by injection. "We were excited to see that our new microneedle patch is just as effective as the needle-delivered flu vaccines, and in some cases even more effective," said Professor Nakagawa. Previous research has evaluated the use of microneedles made of silicon or metal, but they were not shown to be safe. Microneedles made from these materials also run the risk of breaking off in the skin, leaving tiny fragments behind. The new dissolvable patch eliminates this risk, as the microneedles are designed to dissolve in the skin. "We have shown that the patch is safe and that it works well. Since it is also painless and very easy for non-trained people to use, we think it could bring about a major change in the way we administer vaccines globally," said Professor Nakagawa. Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Elsevier. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: Sachiko Hirobe, Hiroaki Azukizawa, Takaaki Hanafusa, Kazuhiko Matsuo, Ying-Shu Quan, Fumio Kamiyama, Ichiro Katayama, Naoki Okada, Shinsaku Nakagawa. Clinical study and stability assessment of a novel transcutaneous influenza vaccination using a dissolving microneedle patch. Biomaterials, 2015; 57: 50 DOI: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2015.04.007

Vaccine hesitancy: Journal collection investigates vaccination decision-making

Researchers explore individuals' confidence or reluctance to vaccinate their families and the associated effects on global health, in a collection published on February 25, 2015 by the open-access journal, PLOS Currents: Outbreaks. The collection is accompanied by the editorial "Hesitancy, trust and individualism in vaccination decision-making" by Jonathan E. Suk et al. from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Vaccines are thought to be one of the most successful public health measures, but some individuals are hesitant to vaccinate their families for a variety of reasons. Due to the current spread of vaccine-preventable diseases, including the most recent measles outbreaks in California and Berlin, Suk notes that the issue of vaccine hesitancy "appears to be increasingly pressing and politicized in many parts of the world." Peretti-Watel et al. and Larson et al. analyze the ambiguity of the language surrounding the terms vaccine hesitancy and confidence, and stress the importance of clarifying these terms when communicating about vaccinations. Other researchers examined how public trust in larger social structures and health systems correlates with the decision to vaccinate in both the United States and Europe. The collection also hones in on issues surrounding specific vaccines, including a paper that investigates US women's intentions to request the Tdap and influenza vaccines while pregnant, as well as an article about the H1N1 vaccination and how public communication affects individuals' perceptions of vaccines. Likewise, contemporary vaccination coverage is explored in Schuster et al., which relates to the ongoing measles outbreak in Berlin and its disproportionate effects in young adults. While some articles address specific vaccination concerns, all wrestle with the issues that arise when even a small subset of vaccine-hesitant or resistant individuals potentially undermine immunization efforts. This leads to the question posed by Larson et al., "How much confidence [in vaccines] is enough?" Suk believes this is a significant question to explore as vaccine hesitancy remains an issue of both policy and personal decision. The freely available collection is available at: http://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/perspectives-on-vaccine-hesitancy-and-vaccination-coverage/

When vaccines are imperfect: What math can tell us about their effects on disease propagation

 

November 20, 2014

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

The control of certain childhood diseases is difficult, despite high vaccination coverage in many countries. One of the possible reasons for this is 'imperfect vaccines,' that is, vaccines that fail either due to 'leakiness,' lack of effectiveness on certain individuals in a population, or shorter duration of potency. In a new article, authors use a mathematical model to determine the consequences of vaccine failure and resulting disease dynamics.

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The control of certain childhood diseases is difficult, despite high vaccination coverage in many countries. One of the possible reasons for this is "imperfect vaccines," that is, vaccines that fail either due to "leakiness," lack of effectiveness on certain individuals in a population, or shorter duration of potency.

In a paper publishing in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, authors Felicia Magpantay, Maria Riolo, Matthieu Domenech de Celles, Aaron King, and Pejman Rohani use a mathematical model to determine the consequences of vaccine failure and resulting disease dynamics.

"We examined the effects of individual-level vaccine failure on the propagation of a disease through a population," says author Felicia Magpantay. "Specifically, we took into account different ways in which vaccines may fail. We distinguished between vaccine-induced immunity that is 'leaky', whereby vaccination reduces the probability of infection upon exposure but does not eliminate it; 'all-or-nothing', which leads to perfect protection in some individuals, but none in others; and 'waning', which reflects transient protection--or some combination of all three."

While leakiness, degree and duration of coverage have direct effects at the individual level, the protection from imperfect vaccines and reduced disease transmission at the population level is not easy to determine. "By carefully ensuring a like-with-like comparison of the differences in the mechanism of vaccine failure, we identified distinct epidemiological signatures at the population-level and explored their implications for disease control," Magpantay explains.

The group of professional applied mathematicians considers a systematic analysis based on the "susceptible-infectious-recovered" model used in epidemiological studies. This model allows one to calculate the number of susceptible, infectious and recovered individuals in a population, factoring in infection and recovery rates as well as contact between susceptible and infected individuals. The authors adapt this model with an added vaccine component to compare the dynamics of the three aforementioned types of imperfect vaccines.

The critical proportion of the model population that needs to be vaccinated in order to drive the disease to extinction is seen to be the same in all three cases. When vaccination coverage is maintained below the critical ratio, the disease remains endemic in the population at a higher level for leaky vaccines, compared to the other two imperfect vaccines. "Among vaccines that exhibit the same level of individual-level effectiveness, the purely leaky vaccine always leads to the highest prevalence of infection in the long run. The purely all-or-nothing and purely waning vaccines lead to the same levels of prevalence," Magpantay elaborates.

The authors then extend their ordinary differential equation model to account for age distribution in the population using a system of partial differential equations for age-specific transmission. "The age distribution of the infected class depends on the type of vaccine failure, the age-specific contact rates and the vaccine coverage. In the cases that we have considered, the waning vaccine leads to the highest mean age of first infection," Magpantay says.

The authors also show that the three imperfect vaccines have distinct transient dynamics following the initiation of vaccination in a population. "Numerical simulations suggest that vaccination with leaky and waning vaccines can bring about a long honeymoon period: a temporary period of low disease prevalence after the onset of mass vaccination," Magpantay explains. "This provides an alternative explanation for the observed resurgence of some diseases like pertussis in regions that maintain high vaccination coverage." All-or-nothing vaccines appear to show a more stable transition.

Topics for future work include examining the role of seasonality on transmission rates as well as the effect of a vaccine on infectiousness of an individual.

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. F. M. G. Magpantay, M. A. Riolo, M. Domenech de Cellès, A. A. King, P. Rohani. Epidemiological Consequences of Imperfect Vaccines for Immunizing Infections. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, 2014; 74 (6): 1810 DOI: 10.1137/140956695

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Scanning babies' fingerprints could save lives through vaccination tracking

 

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A health official in Benin, Africa scans a baby's fingerprints for the vaccination database.

Each year 2.5 million children die worldwide because they do not receive life-saving vaccinations at the appropriate time.

Anil Jain, Michigan State University professor, is developing a fingerprint-based recognition method to track vaccination schedules for infants and toddlers, which will increase immunization coverage and save lives.

To increase coverage, the vaccines must be recorded and tracked. The traditional tracking method is for parents to keep a paper document. But in developing countries, keeping track of a baby's vaccine schedule on paper is largely ineffective, Jain said.

"Paper documents are easily lost or destroyed," he said. "Our initial study has shown that fingerprints of infants and toddlers have great potential to accurately record immunizations. You can lose a paper document, but not your fingerprints."

Jain and his team traveled to rural health facilities in Benin, West Africa, to test the new fingerprint recognition system. They used an optical fingerprint reader to scan the thumbs and index fingers of babies and toddlers. From this scanned data, a schedule will be created and become a part of the vaccine registry system.

Once the electronic registry is in place, health care workers simply re-scan the child's fingers to view the vaccination schedule. They know who has been vaccinated, for what diseases and when additional booster shots are needed.

These new electronic registry systems will help overcome the lack and loss of information, which is the primary problem in the vaccine delivery system in third world nations, Jain said.

Collecting fingerprints from fidgety infants is not easy. Another challenge is their small fingerprint patterns have low contrast between ridges and valleys.

"The process can still be improved but we have shown its feasibility," Jain said. "We will continue to work on refining the fingerprint matching software and finding the best reader to capture fingerprints of young children, which will be of immense global value. We also plan to conduct a longitudinal study to ensure that fingerprints of babies can be successfully matched over time."

There will be other benefits in addition to tracking vaccinations, said Mark Thomas, executive director of VaxTrac, a nonprofit organization supporting Jain's research.

"Solving the puzzle of fingerprinting young children will have far-reaching implications beyond health care, including the development of civil registries, government benefits' tracking and education recordkeeping," Thomas said.

 

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Michigan State University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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