Mumps found to have made alarming comeback in U.S.

By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) - Mumps made an alarming comeback in the United States in 2006 and may take years to completely eradicate, federal health experts reported on Wednesday.

The outbreak of the viral disease came despite the widespread use of a second dose of a mumps vaccine, produced by Merck, beginning in 1990.

Eighty-four percent of the people between the ages of 18 and 24 who became ill in the outbreak had received the second recommended dose, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"A more effective mumps vaccine or changes in vaccine policy may be needed to avert future outbreaks and achieve the elimination of mumps," Gustavo Dayan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and colleagues wrote.

There were no deaths from the virus, which can be as mild as a fever and swollen glands, or severe enough to cause deafness, testicular inflammation and encephalitis. But there were 6,584 cases nationwide and 85 hospitalizations, most concentrated in eight midwestern states and on college campuses.

"It would have been tens of thousands of cases if we didn't have the coverage," said Jane Seward, deputy director of the CDC's division of viral diseases.

The U.S. has a goal of eliminating the disease by 2010, but doctors consider a disease eliminated if there are no new home-grown cases over a 12-month period, Seward said in a telephone interview.

Thus, the goal might be achievable. But permanently banishing the disease is unlikely because 43 percent of nations do not vaccinate against the disease.