New illness surfaces as pneumococcal vaccine succeeds - Indigenous child
Saturday, April 28, 2007 (18:28:21)

Posted by Cougar

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, April 24 (UPI) -- Vaccine-resistant strains of
pneumococcus are turning up quickly in Alaska, erasing gains made by the
PCV7 vaccine first given to kids there in 2001. Researcher Rosalyn Singleton
and her colleagues in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention office
in Anchorage found that invasive pneumococcal disease decreased 67 percent
in Alaska Native children under age 2, and 61 percent in non-Native children
of the same age between 2001 and 2003.

But evolving strains of bacteria not covered by the PCV7 vaccine cancelled
those gains by 2006.

"The rapid success of PCV7 in Alaska has led to the near elimination of
PCV7-serotype disease and the elimination of a health disparity for types
covered by the vaccine," the authors wrote. "However, for Alaska Native
children, there now exists a substantially elevated risk for IPD from
serotypes not contained in PCV7.

The findings "may signify a limit to the usefulness of the currently
available vaccine and emphasizes the importance of extended valency vaccines
or vaccines not dependent on serotype-specific prevention. These data also
highlight the value of continued surveillance and other epidemiological
investigations to monitor the effects of pneumococcal vaccines," they
concluded.

To perform the study, the researchers focused on the incidence of IPD in
Alaska Native and non-Native children between 1995 and 2006 using laboratory
surveillance figures on Streptococcus pneumoniae infections, including
pneumonia, meningitis, and bacteremia (blood poisoning).

The study is published in the April 25 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association.