Wampum

Mumps Strikes 245, Puzzling Iowa Officials
By GRETCHEN RUETHLING

Perplexed health officials are trying to find the cause of a skyrocketing number of mumps cases in Iowa, the nation's largest outbreak of the infection in 17 years.

At least 245 cases have been reported in Iowa in the past three months. The state previously averaged five per year. The number is approaching the average annual number reported nationwide.

"When you expect five and you get 245, this is pretty serious," said Patricia Quinlisk, state epidemiologist at the Iowa department of public health. "We're trying to get ahead of it and get it stopped."

The most recent epidemic of mumps occurred in Douglas County, Kan., with 269 cases from 1988 to 1989, said Lola Russell, a spokeswoman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

College students in Iowa account for about 23 percent of the reported cases of the infection, commonly transmitted by coughing or sneezing. About half of the cases are people ages 17 to 25.

Close quarters in dormitories, classrooms and cafeterias and perhaps a lower vaccination rate on college campuses might have made the student population more vulnerable, Ms. Quinlisk said.

So the state epidemiologist throws out the old "lower vaccination rate" straw man. Has she looked at the vaccination records of those who have come down with the disease? Were none in fact vaccinated?

Could there actually be a problem with long-term efficacy of the MMR? The combined MMR vaccine that is most widely in use today was first introduced in 1979. If given at age 12 - 24 months, as suggested, children innoculated in 1979 would be in their mid-twenties in 2006. Could combining the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines into one have reduced the effectiveness of the mumps portion? Wouldn't that have been just as reasonable an assertion as "lower vaccination rates", particularly since rates don't drop all at once?