Mumps among college students due to waning immunity

https://www.science.org/content/article/why-so-many-college-students-are-coming-down-mumps

However, vaccine recommendations and college vaccination requirements do not appear to have taken waning mumps immunity into account yet.

When measles started to make a comeback, I wondered if mumps would follow soon after. Then I saw that there was an outbreak of mumps at a university in California. Apparently there was also one at Harvard a few years ago.

This is not good. I know this can be serious at least for adult men (I am not sure regarding anyone else, but avoiding it seems like a good idea for everyone).

I wonder how many of the students getting mumps now were vaccinated as a child, versus were never vaccinated.

Certainly current recommendations do not appear to take waning immunity into account.

I don’t think waning immunity was as much of a concern before herd immunity was negatively impacted. This is relatively recent. However, in the current environment, I don’t know if vaccine guidance will be updated accordingly.

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I asked my MD about this last week and he didn’t feel like a booster was necessary because I had an MMR booster when I was trying to get pregnant, although he did offer to draw titers.

I’ll be curious to follow if the guidelines change if there are more outbreaks.

My great uncle got Mumps as he was escaping from Berlin to Vietnam (!) in the 1930s, and he became sterile for life. :frowning: My son got a boosting MMR last spring along with his other college vaccines. (Thanks to CC people for reassuring me that it was likely a whole MMR; we’d requested Measles vaccination after a school-reported case.)

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I have seen presumed mumps (severe BL parotid gland infection), multiple times, in teens who had received both MMRs, but never saw orchitis in any of them. I suspect that the induction of immunity is less than for measles (and a quick Google search confirms that). If the seroconversion rate for mumps is as low as 88% after 2 MMR doses, then it’s still going to circulate a bit, which goes along with the fact that I’d see it now and then in teens. Of course, now with increased MMR refusal, we’re going to see more of it.

Lower levels of antibody doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is not still immune. They can still have a robust response when exposed. But another MMR can’t hurt - it just seems that if two MMRs have not induced immunity, then subsequent doses are unlikely to induce immunity.

I had an uncomplicated case of mumps when I was about five. It was horrible. I remember how I suffered. And I had varicella when I was about 22 - that too was really awful. I feel so bad for the kids whose parents have chosen that they should suffer through these preventable childhood illnesses.

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The same son who just got another MMR had a reaction (spots that looked like Mumps) to the MMR vaccine when he was the toddler age that you get the shot. I’m hopeful that it [if anything] suggests that the vaccine did something and that he’s protected, particularly with the booster now.

The hallmark of mumps is tender parotid gland enlargement, not a rash. Rarely, some kids do get a rash after the MMR, thought to be related to the measles component - I never saw an example of it.

Well, it happened to DS :slight_smile: I looked for a photo but I had a different email back then. I also thought it would have been related to the measles component, but his pediatrician at the time told us it was related to the mumps component…?

p.s. he’s a very rash-y kid so maybe that’s why.

My S also got a rash after a toddler MMR.

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