NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Japanese researchers say mumps-related hearing loss in children may be 20 times more common than previously suggested.
"Deafness is a rare but important complication of mumps virus infection," the researchers note in a report in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
They determined the incidence of sudden hearing loss in children with mumps based upon a population-based office survey of more than 7500 patients from 40 pediatric practices in Japan, a country where mumps is endemic (constantly present).
Among 7400 children who took hearing tests after the onset of mumps, 7, or 0.1 percent, had confirmed hearing loss.
Hearing loss in the 7 children was confined to one ear but was "severe and did not improve over time," the researchers note.
"We were surprised so many people get hearing loss after mumps," Dr. Hiromi Hashimoto, from Hashimoto Pediatric Clinic in Osaka, Japan, told Reuters Health.
None of the 7 children with mumps-related hearing loss had been vaccinated against mumps.
"I'm afraid many Japanese people, including physicians, don't know about mumps deafness," Hashimoto said. "Many Japanese people believe mumps is a slight illness if only caught in childhood. We want many people to have a proper understanding about mumps and the importance of vaccination."
In a commentary on the Hashimoto's report, Dr. Stanley A. Plotkin from the University of Pennsylvania, Doylestown, highlights the lack of universal mumps vaccination in Japan.
The absence of vaccination against mumps is "surprising for a developed country," Plotkin wrote, "and this regrettable policy must be changed for the sake of Japanese children."
The number is small, but it is still larger than previously thought and definitely helped me convince her that the diseases protected against by the MMR are not risk-free, despite the myths out there on the internet about them.
Say NO to circumcisionIT'S A BOY! This is a great link to show expecting parents.
It's always surprised me that those people who have suspicions about MMR don't, apparently, realise that even if there was a link between MMR and autism: it would still be safer to immunize children against those three infections, compared to the chances of developing autism.
(I am of course assuming that this is what your friend was having thoughts about. Or it could have been a general media-inculcated suspicion of the vaccine.)
I think for her the fear came from a culmination of the internet press (anti vaccine sites all over), seeing anti vaccination leaning stuff on TV/print such as the Generation Rescue ads that keep running in the USA Today paper, which I know she gets, and general word of mouth from other parents.
Say NO to circumcisionIT'S A BOY! This is a great link to show expecting parents.
Cairber wrote:
The number is small, but it is still larger than previously thought and definitely helped me convince her that the diseases protected against by the MMR are not risk-free, despite the myths out there on the internet about them.
Is there even such a thing as a "risk-free" disease? You have to be a retard to think a viral infection attacking your system is "risk-free"...
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Intio wrote:And no doubt Jenny McCarthy's "Mommy-sense"
Mind elaborating?
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
PeZook wrote:
Is there even such a thing as a "risk-free" disease? You have to be a retard to think a viral infection attacking your system is "risk-free"...
There are, by definition, no "risk-free" diseases, but the vast majority of infections (viral or otherwise) do not actually cause a disease; tellingly, a significant fraction of your genome is basically a collection of "sleeping" viruses (without expression promoters, generally).
Vaccines have a risk. Going without vaccines has an even greater risk. Vaccines being truly effective require extremely high degrees vaccination. Ergo shut the fuck up and get your child vaccinated. Every time I hear about people who claim to read the research and then elect not to vaccinate their child, I want to beat them with a Nerf bat until blood flies. Its absolutely infuriating that we are letting people make life and death decisions without any pretense of knowledge.
"If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, pound on the law. If neither is on your side, pound on the table."
"The captain claimed our people violated a 4,000 year old treaty forbidding us to develop hyperspace technology. Extermination of our planet was the consequence. The subject did not survive interrogation."
