Vaccines are one of most important ways to prevent disease

With chil­dren back in school and win­ter just around the cor­ner, it’s a good time to make sure you and your fam­ily are up to date on your vac­ci­na­tions against con­ta­gious sea­sonal diseases.

The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) rec­om­mends the flu vac­cine for peo­ple over the age of six months. It is espe­cially impor­tant for preg­nant women and oth­ers at high risk for com­pli­ca­tions such as pneu­mo­nia. Esti­mates of flu-related deaths over the past three decades have ranged from 3,000 to 40,000 a year. About 90 per­cent of flu-related deaths occur in peo­ple over the age of 65.

The vac­cine takes about two weeks to become effec­tive, and immu­nity lasts about one year, so we rec­om­mend that you receive your flu shot as early as pos­si­ble. Flu viruses tend to peak in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, but the sea­son can run from Octo­ber through late May.

Side effects of the vac­ci­na­tion can include pain, red­ness and swelling at the injec­tion site, headache, mus­cle aches, mild fever and fatigue. But, because you are being injected with a dead virus, there’s no truth to the myth that the flu shot can actu­ally give you the flu.

Peo­ple who should not be vac­ci­nated include those with a severe aller­gic reac­tion to chicken eggs, those who have had severe reac­tions to the vac­cine and chil­dren younger than 6 months. Peo­ple with a his­tory of Guillain-Barre Syn­drome, a severe par­a­lytic dis­or­der, should dis­cuss the safety of the vac­cine with their physicians.

The pneu­mo­nia vac­cine should be con­sid­ered for adults over the age of 65, and younger adults with risk fac­tors such as asthma, chronic obstruc­tive pul­monary dis­ease (COPD), dia­betes and immune-compromising ill­nesses or treat­ments. The CDC rec­om­mends a dif­fer­ent pneu­mo­nia vac­cine for chil­dren younger than five. Side effects are few but may include fever, rash and aller­gic reac­tions. Women should be vac­ci­nated before becom­ing pregnant.

The child­hood vac­cine DTaP pre­vents against diph­the­ria, tetanus and per­tus­sis and is rec­om­mended for chil­dren younger than age seven, begin­ning at two months of age. A booster, called Tdap, is rec­om­mended for chil­dren at about age 12.

The CDC also rec­om­mends the Tdap booster for adults, espe­cially those in close con­tact with infants. The idea is to cre­ate a “cocoon” of immu­nity around infants to pre­vent trans­mis­sion. Most adults lose their immu­nity to per­tus­sis (whoop­ing cough) even if they were vac­ci­nated as chil­dren. Side effects from the vac­cines can include fever, irri­tabil­ity, fatigue and vomiting

The CDC rec­om­mends the shin­gles vac­cine for all adults age 60 and older. The effects of shin­gles typ­i­cally are more severe the older you are. Shin­gles is caused by the same virus that causes chicken pox, but any­one older than 60 should receive the vac­cine regard­less of whether they have had chicken pox. Peo­ple with severe aller­gic reac­tions to the vaccine’s com­po­nents or who have a weak­ened immune sys­tem from cer­tain con­di­tions and treat­ments should not get the vaccine.

We’d rather pre­vent dis­ease than treat it, and vac­ci­na­tion is one of the most impor­tant ways we can pro­tect our­selves from con­tract­ing sea­sonal dis­ease and spread­ing it to oth­ers. Visit the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion at cdc.gov/vaccines for more information.

Dr. Sarah Boehmer Schwartz is a fam­ily med­i­cine physi­cian with Pow­ell Fam­ily Med­i­cine and an active mem­ber of the Ohio­Health Grady Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal med­ical staff.

Posted by Grady Memorial Hospital on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.