Mumps making a comeback in Australia

Experts are concerned that mumps, once a thing of the past, may be making a comeback in Australia and they are blaming it on the absence of proper vaccinations during childhood.

Doctors fear a resurgence of the face-swelling infection in young adults because many left school before the introduction of a national immunisation campaign in 1998.

A study by researchers from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, has found young adults are more at risk of contracting the virus for this reason and they say it is important for young people to have their second dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, especially if they are considering travelling overseas.

Professor Peter McIntyre says it is this young adult group who are more likely not to be fully protected and travel overseas is a really good prompter because so many people in that age group of 20 to 30 do so, and says it is just as important to make sure the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is up to date as are all the traditional travel vaccines like typhoid and cholera.

Professor McIntyre, director of the Centre, says since 2005, 41% of people affected by the viral illness were in their 20s and mostly born between 1978 and 1982 and the number of cases has increased almost tenfold this decade, reaching 512 in 2007.

Young adults are the group who would had already left school before the launch of a re-immunisation campaign aimed at avoiding a measles epidemic, so they were either not immunised or their immunity from a single shot of measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine received in childhood had waned.

Currently children routinely receive two MMR shots - at 12 months and at four years - and experts believe it is the second dose which is really important for ensuring long-term immunity.

Experts say vaccine-acquired immunity is not as strong and long-lasting as disease-acquired immunity and mumps like many other childhood diseases, is more severe in adults.

Since 1998 two people have died of mumps but complication rates are much lower than in the pre-vaccination era.

The main symptoms of mumps are fever, swollen salivary glands around the jaw and a general feeling of being unwell.

Mumps can also cause meningitis or encephalitis, pancreatitis, or spread to the testicles in a small number of men - in recent years mumps cases had gone undiagnosed and patients have been treated for other conditions because the current generation of doctors may not have encountered mumps and discounted it as a possibility.

Professor McIntyre says campaigns to immunise people in their 20s are unlikely to be successful and a better approach might be to ensure young people had an MMR jab along with other travel vaccinations when going overseas as many pick up the infection in countries that do not routinely immunise against it.

The study says that notified mumps cases increased from 60 in 2002 to 231 in 2005 and 512 in 2007 and between 1994 and 2005, there were 605 hospitalisations for mumps.

The researchers say renewed efforts should be made to ensure two-dose MMR coverage is offered to young adults to prevent both mumps and measles.

The research is published in the Medical Journal of Australia.