Health
Mumps outbreak in the Midwest
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted May 1, 2006
Iowa is experiencing a large mumps outbreak that began last December. As of April 10, a total of 515 possible mumps cases had been reported to the state's public health department, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases are also being investigated in six neighboring states.
On April 11, the CDC noted in a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Review dispatch alert that two people with mumps may have been infected during airline travel. The CDC is using new software to track and notify those passengers seated near the index cases. The flight numbers are available in the April 14 MMWR.
Until now, an average of 265 mumps cases had been reported each year in the United States. Mumps is asymptomatic in 20% to 30% of cases, but complications can include inflammation of the testicles or ovaries, meningitis/encephalitis, spontaneous abortion and deafness. Before 1967, nearly all Americans experienced mumps, and 90% of cases occurred among children age 15 and younger.
The first mumps cases in Iowa were reported in a university, and the median patient age in the first 219 cases was 21. Of the 133 patients investigated, 87 had received the full two doses of the MMR vaccine, 19 had received one dose and eight, no doses. Status could not be determined for the rest.
The Iowa Dept. of Public Health is asking all health care facilities to ensure that workers are immune by either checking documentation that two MMR shots had been received, or that there is serologic evidence of immunity or a worker is older than 65 and assumed to have natural immunity due to the disease.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2006/05/01/hlbf0501.htm.
