Mom's antibodies last a few months in baby

Young infants appear to have a gap in their protection against measles, from around two to three months old until they are vaccinated at 12 months of age...This is because the level of antibodies infants get from their mother drops over time, leaving them susceptible until they are vaccinated.

So parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids risk infecting other people's infants.

The study was looking at maternal antibodies and had some other interesting results. Women who had been vaccinated themselves had fewer antibodies than those who got their immunity from having the disease, and so did their kids, and then mom's antibodies fade away in the first few months, much faster in kids of vaccinated moms. "The researchers found no significant impact of breastfeeding, birth weight, educational level, caesarean section or day care attendance on the duration of maternal antibodies" in the kid.

So immunity from measles is stronger in kids of women who got the immunity from the disease. The question is whether the immunity acquired through vaccination is enough to prevent the disease, and it seems to be.

A spoonful of sugar

It seems giving a few drops of sugar water to infants before giving them immunizations makes them cry less. That's worth doing. It didn't work so well after 1 year of age.

Autism and vaccines

This is a good column by James Rainey in today's LA Times about Amy Wallace, who wrote a column in Wired about parental hysteria about vaccines as a cause of autism and got an onslaught of hate mail. One person wrote to her "Who does the government think it is to tell us what is best for public health?"  That's like saying keep the government out of Medicare.

In case anyone still has any doubt, it is clear by now that vaccines do not cause autism, nor does the thimerosal in them cause it. After thimerosal was taken out of nearly all vaccines, autism diagnoses increased.

Tylenol reduces effectiveness of infant vaccinations

When infants get vaccinations, they often get a fever from it, so doctors often give them acetaminophen (eg Tylenol) as a prophylaxis, but it turns out the acetaminophen can reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine. In this controlled study in the Czech Republic, published in the Lancet, 10% of the kids who got acetaminophen to control the fever "had significantly lower levels of protective antibodies against the targets of the vaccination." Fewer kids who got acetaminophen did get a fever (42% vs 66%), so it worked against fever for an extra 24% of the kids. LA Times summary here.

This suggests parents and doctors should wait until a fever develops before giving an infant acetaminophen.