by Eric Stirgus Dr. Lilly Immergluck last week gave what she called “the vaccine lecture” to a group of Morehouse School of Medicine students. Immergluck, a pediatrician, infectious disease specialist and an assistant professor at the Atlanta school since 2005, talks each year to all students there about how vaccines have helped control the spread...
by Amy Norton When parents can no longer get “personal-belief” exemptions from childhood vaccinations, they may get around it by asking for religious exemptions for their kids, a new study finds. Researchers found that after Vermont banned personal-belief exemptions, the number of kindergartners with religious exemptions from vaccination suddenly shot up—from 0.5% to nearly 4%....
by Mayo Clinic News Network Dear Mayo Clinic: I am 72 and take a drug for rheumatoid arthritis that suppresses my immune system. I’m scheduled to receive a vaccine later this year. Is it safe for me to receive this vaccine? A: Appropriate and timely vaccines are important for anyone with a suppressed immune system....
In 2017, a terrible flu season in Australia presaged an American outbreak in which 79,000 died. Experts advise getting the shot soon. Australia had an unusually early and fairly severe flu season this year. Since that may foretell a serious outbreak on its way in the United States, public health experts now are urging Americans...
But many globe-trotting Americans may not realize the problem is worldwide. Therefore, making sure your measles vaccination is up to date is paramount before jetting off. In fact, U.S. outbreaks of measles “are usually started by foreign travelers importing the virus to the U.S.,” according to Dr. Len Horovitz. He’s a specialist in pulmonary illnesses at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “This is...
by Hilde Pracht, Leiden University Micro-needles are a promising tool for the painless administration of vaccines through the skin. But, are these minuscule needles really effective? Ph.D. student Pim Schipper of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research investigated various factors of vaccination via the skin and discovered, among other things, that the injection depth...
By Diane Samson Tech Times Researchers found that there is another benefit to getting the chickenpox vaccine as a child: it can also prevent the development of shingles later in life. In a study backed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a team from the Kaiser Permanent Center for Health Research reviewed...
by Carrie Macmillan, Yale University Measles is so contagious that one infected person can spread the respiratory virus to 90 percent of people in the same room—and it can live in the air for two hours. Often, an infected person doesn’t even know they have measles for several weeks. Early symptoms include a fever, cough, runny nose, and red...
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH, March 14, 2019 – When flu season peaks after mid-winter, tens of thousands of influenza cases and hundreds of deaths can likely be avoided if older adults wait until October to get their flu immunization, a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine analysis reveals in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The protection offered by the flu vaccine...
Vaccinations are the world’s frontline defence against infectious diseases yet despite decades of interventions, unsafe injection practices continue to expose billions of people to serious infection and disease. Now, new technology from the University of South Australia is revolutionising safe vaccination practices through antibacterial, silver-loaded dissolvable microneedle patches, which not only sterilise the injection site to inhibit the growth of bacteria,...
