The Changing Politics and Consistent Science of Vaccinations
The recent outbreak of measles in the United States launched a national debate on vaccinations that has spread rapidly throughout the media and even involved some of the likely 2016 presidential candidates. A Gallup survey and other recent developments make clear that it's a public discussion that we need to continue.
The Gallup survey, released earlier this month, revealed that "a slight majority of Americans, 54%, say it is extremely important that parents get their children vaccinated, down from the 64% who held this belief 14 years ago. Another 30% call it 'very important' - unchanged from 2001." That 10 percent drop ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - March 19, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
The Changing Politics and Consistent Science of Vaccinations
The recent outbreak of measles in the United States launched a national debate on vaccinations that has spread rapidly throughout the media and even involved some of the likely 2016 presidential candidates. A Gallup survey and other recent developments make clear that it's a public discussion that we need to continue.
The Gallup survey, released earlier this month, revealed that "a slight majority of Americans, 54%, say it is extremely important that parents get their children vaccinated, down from the 64% who held this belief 14 years ago. Another 30% call it 'very important' - unchanged from 2001." That 10 percent drop ...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - March 19, 2015 Category: Science Source Type: news
All teens should be vaccinated against rare strain of meningitis
"A vaccination for meningitis is to be offered to all 14-18 year-olds in England and Wales, after a spike in a rare strain of the disease," The Guardian reports. The strain – meningitis W (MenW) – is described as rare, but life-threatening.
There has been a year-on-year increase in the number of meningitis cases caused by MenW since 2009, and infection has been associated with particularly severe disease and high fatality rates in teenagers and young adults. The increasing trend looks set to continue unless action is taken, so the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the bod...
Source: NHS News Feed - March 16, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: QA articles Medication Pregnancy/child Source Type: news
Tetanus Vaccine Boosts Cancer Vaccine in Fighting Brain Tumor
It’s one of the oldest, most effective, and most familiar vaccines – and it just became another tool in our arsenal to fight cancer. In a small trial involving 12 patients, researchers recently used the tetanus vaccine – yes, the same vaccine you get when you end up in the ER after stepping on a rusty nail – to “prime” the immune systems of patients with brain tumors. Then they administered immunotherapy using a new kind of cellular cancer vaccine that trains the immune system to fight the tumor without affecting nearby healthy cells. (Source: Forbes.com Healthcare News)
Source: Forbes.com Healthcare News - March 15, 2015 Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Tara Haelle Source Type: news
A Simple Tetanus Vaccine Could Help Treat The Most Common And Deadly Brain Tumor
NEW YORK (AP) — Can a tetanus shot help treat brain cancer? A small study hints that it might.
A dose of tetanus vaccine let patients live longer when added to an experimental treatment for the most common and deadly kind of brain tumor, researchers report.
It "put the immune system on high alert," paving the way for the experimental treatment to work better in attacking the disease, said researcher Kristen Batich of the Duke University Medical Center.
In a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature, she and others describe a study of 12 patients. Some who got the tetanus shot lived years longer than those who did...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - March 12, 2015 Category: Science Source Type: news
Woman with brain cancer has survived for 9 years thanks to vaccine
Sandy Hillburn, 68, from New Jersey, was offered a slot in an experimental study at Duke University involving adding the tetanus-diphtheria vaccine to a new treatment for glioblastoma. (Source: the Mail online | Health)
Source: the Mail online | Health - March 12, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
Tetanus shot improves patient survival with brain tumor immunotherapy
(Duke University Medical Center) An innovative approach using a tetanus booster to prime the immune system enhances the effect of a vaccine therapy for lethal brain tumors, dramatically improving patient survival, according to a study led by Duke Cancer Institute researchers. (Source: EurekAlert! - Cancer)
Source: EurekAlert! - Cancer - March 11, 2015 Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: news
From the archive, 3 March 1915: Pasteur serum for gangrene
A discovery by the Pasteur Institute offers hope for sufferers of gangrene27 January 1926: New vaccines for tetanus and diptheria Continue reading... (Source: Guardian Unlimited Science)
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - March 3, 2015 Category: Science Authors: Guardian Staff Tags: Medical research Chemistry Science Health & wellbeing First world war Source Type: news
Vaccines and fingolimod
A study of 136 people with MS found that those on fingolimod (Gilenya) were less likely to see the benefits of vaccinations against flu or tetanus, though around two in five people on the drug were protected.
MS Research Australia
Vaccination and immunisation - A to Z of MS (Source: Multiple Sclerosis Trust)
Source: Multiple Sclerosis Trust - March 2, 2015 Category: Neurology Source Type: news
Anti-Vaccination Activists To Blame For Bosnia's Measles Outbreak, Say Experts
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Medical experts warned Friday the anti-vaccination lobby is growing in Bosnia, using scientifically discredited arguments to stoke parental fears in the worst-affected country in Europe's measles outbreak.
This trend — combined with a generation that could not be immunized because of lack of vaccines during Bosnia's 1992-95 war — has led to 5,340 measles cases in Bosnia, according to the World Health Organization. "I am increasingly hearing from parents about their fears due to the stuff they read on the Internet," Dr. Gordana Banduka, a pediatrician from Pale, near Sarajevo, told...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - March 1, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
New vaccine is an important advance in stopping cervical and other HPV-related cancers
If you knew that a vaccine could prevent your daughter or son from developing a relatively common and potentially deadly cancer later in life, would you have her or him get it? Such a vaccine is available, and it’s about to get even better than it is now — but fewer than half of all teens have gotten it.
I am talking about a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV). It is responsible for cervical cancer, which strikes 12,000 women each year in the United States and kills 4,000. Only 15% of women diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer survive for five years or more — a grim statistic. HPV also causes cance...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - February 19, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Gregory Curfman, M.D. Tags: Vaccines cervical cancer cervical cancer vaccine HPV hpv vaccine human papilloma virus Source Type: news
Got Science? Vaccinating Ourselves Against Misinformation
It is dismaying that fears and misinformation about vaccines have led the scourge of measles to return in the United States some 15 years after it had been officially eradicated here. And it's especially discouraging to see some early 2016 presidential hopefuls such as Chris Christie and Rand Paul pander on the issue rather than taking a strong evidence-based stance because the facts could not be more clear: Vaccines are safe and they save lives.
One of the tragic aspects of this story is that some of the 102 measles cases so far this year in the United States have struck children under a year old who are too young to rec...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - February 12, 2015 Category: Science Source Type: news
UC plans to require vaccinations for incoming students starting in 2017
The University of California will require incoming students to be screened for tuberculosis and vaccinated for measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, meningococcus, tetanus and whooping cough under a plan set to take effect in 2017.
Currently, the UC system only requires students to be vaccinated against hepatitis B, though several campuses have additional requirements.
The plan — designed to help protect the health of students and campus communities — has been in the works for a year. But the need is more pressing than ever, given the current multistate measles outbreak and the re-emergence of other vaccine-preventable...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - February 7, 2015 Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news
University Of California System To Require Measles Shots
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Students entering the University of California system in 2017 will have to be vaccinated against measles and other diseases under new immunization rules announced Friday.
The change, which had been in the works before the latest measles outbreak, has taken on new urgency after infections that originated at Disneyland in December spread to communities in half a dozen states and Mexico. Most who fell ill were not vaccinated. UC currently requires students to be inoculated only against hepatitis B, although some individual campuses have stricter immunization rules. The new plan will require students to b...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - February 7, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
Ghana: Ghana Failed to Immunize 220kK Children in 2014
[Ghanaian Chronicle]Two hundred and twenty thousand children were not immunized last year against the six killer diseases - polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis, pertussis (whooping cough), measles and tetanus, according to Dr. Joan Awanyo-Akaba, the Civil Society rep on the board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). (Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine)
Source: AllAfrica News: Health and Medicine - January 29, 2015 Category: African Health Source Type: news
