Latest / Pediatrics Now: Cases Updates and Discussions for the Busy Pediatric Practitioner / The Buzz About: Mosquito Borne Illnesses, Polio, and HPV
Transcript
- 0:00So and before I forget, I know you bring things for the group with Barbie souvenirs.
- 0:05Do you want to mention what you brought? I'm just curious.
- 0:07I'm going to forget if we dig into office. Well, I have a very cute pink shirt
- 0:13in Barbie letters that says vote. That's nice. Yep.
- 0:18And this year, the theme of the Barbie convention was kind of a mystery theme.
- 0:24It was a little bit like a clue game mystery theme. It was in Palm Springs where
- 0:29there's all of these like amazing mid-century modern houses.
- 0:33So it was kind of like a mystery at the Barbie dream house, you know, thing.
- 0:38And so the souvenirs that we brought home were actually like cardboard,
- 0:42a mid-century modern dream house backdrops and furniture.
- 0:48Welcome.
- 0:49Music.
- 1:14Pediatrics Now is brought to you by the Department of Pediatrics at the University
- 1:19of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and University Health's new Women's
- 1:25and Children's Hospital.
- 1:26Which is pretty swanky. Very nice. Yes.
- 1:31That sounds so fun. Do you feel like doing things like that,
- 1:34going to the Barbie convention, which you're passionate about,
- 1:37does that help you to do an even better job to be able to unplug and go do something like that?
- 1:44Yeah, I think everybody needs to have a work-life balance, right?
- 1:48Like it's, you know, if your job is stressful, regardless of what kind of job
- 1:52it is, it's, you know, you need to have an outlet.
- 1:59So shall we move on to West Nile virus? Sure.
- 2:03So this was also a major headline recently. Our former top U.S.
- 2:11Infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, was hospitalized with the mosquito-borne
- 2:16West Nile virus. So West Nile virus is a virus that we pick up by being bitten by a mosquito.
- 2:25And so we get West Nile virus pretty much every year since the early 2000s.
- 2:33So that virus sort of arrived in the United States in like 2003 or something like that.
- 2:39And since that time, it continues to circulate.
- 2:44It's seasonal, so it has a season of when mosquitoes are out and biting us.
- 2:49So we're actually currently in the season. We're actually just past the season.
- 2:53So as it cools off and the mosquitoes become less crazy, the West Nile season goes away.
- 3:00So it usually peaks in August every year.
- 3:04Nationwide, it peaks in August every year. And it is a virus that infects our
- 3:10nervous system, so it causes an encephalitis.
- 3:14Which is basically just means an infection of the brain tissue.
- 3:18And most people who are infected don't know that they are? That's right.
- 3:22So as with many viruses, we pick them up.
- 3:26Our immune system does its job. We get a brief illness, or maybe not even an illness at all.
- 3:31Maybe we're just asymptomatic, right? Maybe we don't have any symptoms because
- 3:34our immune system was on patrol.
- 3:37It found a virus. It killed it.
- 3:39And we never even knew it was there. So some people will just get a nothing.
- 3:45Some people will get a brief kind of, I don't feel well, I've got a headache
- 3:49and a fever for a few days, and then they get better.
- 3:54And some people will get the more serious, full-blown encephalitis.
- 3:58So what is your advice? I know we talked about it in summer safety,
- 4:01and we have listeners, practitioner listeners, especially around the world.
- 4:06So what is your advice in general for West Nile prevention? So for the individual person.
- 4:15West Nile is a mosquito-borne virus. The mosquito is the most dangerous animal in the world, right?
- 4:21Kills more people than any other animal in the whole world. Wow.
- 4:26When you put it that way, I'm worried.
- 4:30Right? More dangerous than lions, more dangerous than cobras, a mosquito.
- 4:35Because mosquitoes carry lots of different infections. So here in the United
- 4:39States, we mostly have West Nile
- 4:43as our mosquito-borne infection and a few other things here and there.
- 4:48But around the world, there's dengue, there's malaria, there's yellow fever,
- 4:53there's Japanese encephalitis.
- 4:55There's a lot of different viruses that are carried by mosquitoes.
- 4:58So the best thing that we can do to protect ourselves against mosquito-borne
- 5:04viruses is to protect ourselves against mosquitoes.
- 5:07And so that is all of the normal common sense things that we do,
- 5:11like when it is mosquito season, you know, wearing long sleeves and long pants,
- 5:17as much as you can tolerate that,
- 5:19and mosquito repellents, right?
- 5:22You know, when there's an outbreak of something, you know, addressing things
- 5:26like the, you know, like the potted plants in your yard that were there,
- 5:30or, you know, uncovered pools or.
- 5:34Puddles or, you know, water where mosquitoes breed, things like that.
- 5:40But really, it's just mosquito avoidance and all the normal things that we do to avoid mosquitoes.
- 5:46Is it on the rise since it's getting attention?
- 5:49It's actually not on the rise right now. So yeah, so I looked up some stats
- 5:54and it looks like this year we've had 65 cases in Texas, 880 cases in the United States as a whole.
- 6:02And those numbers are about normal for us.
- 6:05So we're not having some unusual West Nile outbreak, we're having kind of our
- 6:11usual flurry of West Niles.
- 6:15And, and so we're,
- 6:18This is actually where we really need public health authorities,
- 6:23like the health departments actually surveil for West Nile.
- 6:27So we have these things called sentinel chickens and sentinel horses.
- 6:31And these are like farm places where the health department goes and they test
- 6:39them to see if they've been exposed to West Nile.
- 6:41And that's how they know in advance, before we start seeing human cases,
- 6:46whether West Nile has kind of entered our regional community.
- 6:51And so, yeah. So people who are interested in that can actually pay attention
- 6:54to, I mean, the Texas Department of State Health Services has a whole website,
- 7:00whole webpage devoted to West Nile.
- 7:02And you can look at like the maps of like, where are the West Nile cases in Texas?
- 7:07How many cases, how many human cases, how many encephalitis cases?
- 7:10You can get all that information, you know, for free from the health department
- 7:16because that's, you know, an amazing part of our public health system.
- 7:20So most states would have that as well or every state. Yep.
- 7:24So that's so interesting. And I know you'd like to keep your eye on the wastewater. Yeah.
- 7:30Because that tells us a lot, too, from the health department.
- 7:34Yeah. So not all health departments do wastewater screenings.
- 7:39But wastewater is kind of a neat way that we can keep track of the things that
- 7:45are circulating in our communities.
- 7:47Shall we move on to something else mosquitoes carry? Sure.
- 7:53Eastern equine encephalitis, which sounds terrible and is terrible.
- 7:58Yes. And I mean, this can kill someone. In fact, it killed someone in New Hampshire recently.
- 8:05That's right. So Eastern equine encephalitis is also one of these viruses that
- 8:11is carried by mosquitoes.
- 8:12There's actually a bunch of them that we call arboviruses.
- 8:17And so there's Eastern equine, there's Western equine, there's St.
- 8:21Louis encephalitis, there's California equine encephalitis. So there's all sorts
- 8:25of encephalitis viruses.
- 8:28West Nile is one of those. So eastern equine is one of the more particularly
- 8:32severe ones that can lead to a very fulminant, life-threatening encephalitis.
- 8:39Although similar to West Nile, 95% of people who get eastern equine encephalitis
- 8:46have a mild disease or an asymptomatic infection.
- 8:50So it's really only 5% of cases of what some people call triple E,
- 8:56where you get that full-blown encephalitis.
- 8:59But yes, it can absolutely leave you paralyzed permanently or with,
- 9:05you know, brain damage from the inflammation that happens.
- 9:10So the risk is very small, though. However...
- 9:14What else do you want to say about this? And right now, what are you doing until
- 9:19we get that true first cold friend?
- 9:22Are you putting on mosquito repellent when you go out? Sure.
- 9:26So I would say in Texas, we really shouldn't have to worry about eastern equine encephalitis.
- 9:31Like we haven't had that.
- 9:35But I think it is something that health departments will be paying attention
- 9:39to because until a few years ago, we had actually gone for about 20 years in
- 9:46the United States without having any cases of Eastern equine encephalitis.
- 9:50So, you know, we know that once something begins to circulate and it is able
- 9:56to establish itself in the animal reservoir, it can then, you know,
- 10:00begin to recur and rise in humans as well. Does it come from horses?
- 10:06Originally, yeah. So originally I think it was maybe discovered in horses because
- 10:10it actually causes disease in horses, but it actually comes from birds.
- 10:14So most of these viruses, Japanese encephalitis does this too.
- 10:19Most of the viruses have a bird cycle and that's where they kind of stay,
- 10:25you know, year round is being harbored in birds. That's also how they migrate around.
- 10:30So that's how we got West Nile virus because we didn't have that in the United
- 10:34States, but migratory birds brought it from other places.
- 10:40Wow. And Tess, as an infectious disease doctor on the front lines,
- 10:44though, do you still put on mosquito spray every time you go out in your garden? Yep.
- 10:50With DEET? Yep.
- 10:54Yep, I do. I was gardening this weekend, and I sprayed myself with my DEET and
- 11:01went on about my business.
- 11:03So yes. And anywhere clothing isn't covering our skin because mosquitoes can't
- 11:09bite as well. That's right. Mosquitoes are not that strong.
- 11:12They have a hard time biting through your clothes.
- 11:16And so usually they'll bite you in the places that are exposed.
- 11:20So covering up as best as you can and then using some kind of repellent.
- 11:27I usually recommend DEET, but there are a lot of different alternatives.
- 11:33One of the ones, if people are looking for something more natural,
- 11:36is oil of lemon eucalyptus.
- 11:39Not quite as effective, though? Not quite as effective, although in a clinical
- 11:43trial, it was not significantly different than DEET.
- 11:50But you know that the DEET works, so that's what you use. And I know you love
- 11:54to travel. A lot of our listeners do, too.
- 11:55When you're traveling, do you bring or buy mosquito repellent? I do.
- 12:00I'm very vigilant about that, especially because, I mean, I like to travel to
- 12:04the tropics and to developing world places.
- 12:06And those are the places that have dengue and malaria and Japanese encephalitis. Yes.
- 12:13And, you know, and I don't, there is a vaccine for dengue that's not available
- 12:18to us, but. Because we don't need it in the United States?
- 12:22It's available in Puerto Rico, which is the United States, but that's it.
- 12:27So it's available for endemic areas for complicated reasons.
- 12:33And similarly, there's a malaria vaccine that is not licensed in the U.S.,
- 12:37but can be used in malaria endemic areas. Wow.
- 12:42And then if you're going somewhere where it's cold, though, you don't worry about that.
- 12:46No, no. Then I don't worry about mosquitoes if it's cold. Bed bugs? Yes.
- 12:51And respiratory viruses, right? Because the winter is winter virus season.
- 12:56And for our practitioner listeners, we will have an episode on everything we're
- 13:01talking about for parents on our sister podcast, Pediatrics Now for Parents,
- 13:05that can also be found wherever you get your podcasts.
- 13:08And the website for that is pediatricsnowforparents.com.
- 13:13Our last topic, unless you want to say anything else about equine encephalitis,
- 13:19is there anything, COVID, flu, anything you want to say? No.
- 13:23Okay, so speaking of paralysis, as we know, this is another recent article.
- 13:30The poliovirus that paralyzed a child in Gaza, the first case in the region
- 13:36in 25 years, has traveled a long path.
- 13:39It says, according to the New York Times, it most likely arose in Nigeria and
- 13:43made its way to Chad, where it was first detected in 2019, according to the genetic data.
- 13:49Analysis. Poliovirus is a virus that, you know, we had a ton of up until the
- 14:00early part of the 20th century.
- 14:03My grandfather actually had polio when he was a baby.
- 14:07Did he have long-term effects? He did. Yeah, he did. He had a very abnormal gait.
- 14:15And then, of course, you know, by
- 14:18the time he was middle-aged he really had to use a wheelchair
- 14:21but he he actually didn't mind because
- 14:24because ultimately because he couldn't walk properly he
- 14:27couldn't enroll in the military when he was a young man
- 14:30and so then world war ii he got to stay at home in his small texas town and
- 14:37he says he married the prettiest girl in town because all the other boys were
- 14:41gone and she was pretty my grandma was the best girl in town.
- 14:50So yeah, so polio, you know, most of us have never seen polio.
- 14:55But if we are now of an old age, like I am, you know, we had grandparents and
- 15:02older family members who may have had polio.
- 15:05And polio is no joke. Like polio paralyzes you and leaves you usually with a permanent disability.
- 15:13So scary. If you survive it.
- 15:15So, and, and so we, we have had very, very effective vaccines for polio.
- 15:22And traditionally there have been two types of vaccines for polio.
- 15:28One is the, an oral live polio vaccine, which contains live polio viruses and you swallow them.
- 15:38Polio is a virus that we ingest. So it's fecal oral. So we get it from contaminated food or water.
- 15:47And then it...
- 15:50Circulates, it grows in our intestines and can infect our spinal cord.
- 15:56And then, and we poop it out. And when we poop it out, then it gets into the
- 16:01soil or the water and other people become exposed. And that's how polio spreads.
- 16:06And, and, and so we had the first vaccine for polio was an alive oral polio
- 16:13vaccine where the virus had been altered so that it couldn't make you sick,
- 16:17but that it could still grow in your intestines and you pooped it out.
- 16:22And the advantage of that is
- 16:24you could give a certain number of people in your village polio vaccine,
- 16:29and then everybody would get kind of vaccinated because everybody would get
- 16:34exposed to each other's poop in their contaminated water or through poor hand
- 16:40hygiene or whatever, right? Like all the things.
- 16:43And so you would get what's called herd immunity. That's actually what herd
- 16:46immunity is, is where you've vaccinated a few members of the community,
- 16:51but then everybody gets immunity because they all actually get exposed to the virus.
- 16:56And so we don't use the oral polio vaccine in the US. We haven't used it for decades.
- 17:03And then there's an injectable polio vaccine, which is not live. It's killed viruses.
- 17:10So it's viruses that have been killed.
- 17:12And then And we put their pieces into us to teach our immune system what polio looks like.
- 17:17And both of those vaccines are very effective.
- 17:21The oral polio vaccine may be a little bit more effective than the injectable one,
- 17:25but obviously has its initial intended effect of giving herd immunity,
- 17:32which is an unfortunate unintended effect of spreading polio.
- 17:37Right, of having polio then circulating in a water system.
- 17:42Or a sewage system that is capable of infecting people.
- 17:47And so then if you, so for instance, a couple of years ago, there was a case
- 17:52of polio in a man in New York, and not in New York City, but in one of the other
- 17:57cities and other towns in New York.
- 17:59And he was unvaccinated, so he didn't have any of his own protection against
- 18:05polio because he himself had not been vaccinated, but he was exposed to this
- 18:10vaccine strain of polio.
- 18:12So somebody in the community that he was in contact with had had the oral vaccine
- 18:19and was pooping out vaccine polio, and he ingested that.
- 18:25And because he didn't have any immunity, he got polio from the vaccine polio.
- 18:30So all of the polio that we have had in the United States since, I mean, a long...
- 18:38A long time, decades and decades, has been what's called vaccine-associated paralytic polio or VAP.
- 18:47And so that's why we stopped using the oral polio vaccine, because we just don't
- 18:51have enough circulating polio anymore.
- 18:53We've basically eradicated it from the United States. So we didn't need to use
- 18:57that version of the vaccine anymore. We could use the other version.
- 19:00But in the rest of the world, they have used the oral polio vaccine.
- 19:04But the problem is, is that in most places, there are only places,
- 19:08there've only been a tiny number of wild type polio infections left in the world
- 19:14in, and I don't remember all, it's like Nigeria and Pakistan and a few other places.
- 19:21Every other polio case in the world has been vaccine-associated polio.
- 19:26So there has been a large push to move away from the oral polio vaccine,
- 19:30because why would we keep allowing people to be exposed to the live poliovirus
- 19:37if there's enough immunity that we can prevent it from happening using the killed poliovirus vaccine?
- 19:47But the problem is you have wars
- 19:50and other things that disrupt vaccination campaigns and people lose it,
- 19:55whole entire communities lose immunity to diseases because in the middle of
- 20:02a war, you can't, you can't do your vaccine campaigns.
- 20:07And so that's when we see measles come back. You know,
- 20:10we see measles running rampant in, in Syrian refugee camps and you see chicken
- 20:17pox running rampant in our southern border, you know, immigration centers.
- 20:24And you see polio popping up in Syria and in Gaza and places like that.
- 20:31So and then the race is on now to vaccinate as many children as possible in Gaza.
- 20:37How worried are you about this? I mean, I'm worried about it.
- 20:43For those people. I'm not worried about it for the United States,
- 20:47except that we have less and less and less coverage of polio vaccine.
- 20:55We have more and more people who decline getting their children vaccinated.
- 21:02And so, you know, with eventually somebody, you know, people are going to travel
- 21:09around and are going to pick up, you know, a wild type polio strain and bring it back.
- 21:17And the solution to that is not preventing people from moving around, right?
- 21:25Preventing UN peacekeepers from going to a country and then going back to their
- 21:30home country or preventing refugees from coming from one place to another place or preventing,
- 21:35you know christian missionaries from going to
- 21:38a place and then coming home right like the the
- 21:41key is let's keep everybody at home and as immune as possible so that way when
- 21:46these diseases get accidentally imported back into our community we don't really
- 21:50have to worry about them because there's enough enough widespread immune protection
- 21:56that they don't even have a chance to circulate,
- 21:59which goes back to the vaccines.
- 22:02Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and killed polio vaccine, the IPV or the inactivated
- 22:08polio vaccine, that's the injectable one, is super safe. You can't get polio from that vaccine.
- 22:14All you can get is immunity to polio from that vaccine.
- 22:17So, you know, that should be a no-brainer.
- 22:22Anybody who's going to be traveling, you know, to do any kind of medical work
- 22:26or missionary work or military work or peacekeeping work should be vaccinated for polio.
- 22:33Say if there was more of an outbreak, would we be able to get the vaccines in
- 22:38mass quantities in the United States? We should be.
- 22:42I mean, we should be. I mean, as far as I know, I don't know that there's a
- 22:46shortage of polio vaccine.
- 22:48You know, the polio vaccine is part of our routine childhood vaccination series. And for the...
- 22:54The parents who choose not to get their kids vaccinated, though,
- 22:58they could be opened up to getting polio at some point?
- 23:01They could be. I mean, the good thing is because we are not using the oral polio
- 23:07vaccine, if a parent has chosen to not vaccinate their child,
- 23:12their child has an extremely low risk of coming in contact with the vaccine-associated
- 23:19polio virus because we don't have that circulating in our community.
- 23:23The exception becomes when that child travels, right, or the parents have traveled
- 23:32and then they come home with that and their child's not protected.
- 23:37The pediatric practitioners say some parents are saying, I don't want so many
- 23:42vaccines where they're lumped together.
- 23:45Is there any concern about the current recommendations, a child or baby getting
- 23:50too many vaccines at once?
- 23:52No. So, I mean, this is an issue that often gets raised, that this idea that
- 23:58we're exposing them to too many antigens at the same time and that that will
- 24:03overwhelm the immune system or be too much for the immune system to handle.
- 24:07And while that might make sense logically, I think that we have to remember
- 24:12that every single thing, every time we breathe...
- 24:17Every time we eat or drink, we actually expose our body to a bunch of different pathogens.
- 24:24Like there are things that we don't see them, but they live in like the dust and the houseplants.
- 24:32None of our food is actually sterile. Our water is not sterile.
- 24:37And so we put antigens inside our body on a second by second basis.
- 24:44And so we're constantly being exposed to antigens.
- 24:48And honestly, those few microliters of an antigen that is in a vaccine is like
- 24:57pennies to the daily onslaught of things that our immune systems are dealing.
- 25:03So an antigen is basically a piece, like a protein or some piece of a germ that
- 25:13is the thing that we react to, right?
- 25:16So lots of different things can be an antigen.
- 25:20You know, if you think about a virus, I think everybody's kind of gotten familiar with COVID.
- 25:25If you think about like all those little spike proteins on the outside and the
- 25:30membrane that the virus is made of, and all the little bits and pieces.
- 25:34Every single one of those pieces is an antigen.
- 25:37If you think about your food, like the number of different proteins that are
- 25:43on your food particles is, you know,
- 25:47hundreds, thousands of different shaped components that we can react to, right?
- 25:53So if you have a peanut allergy, you react to peanut antigens,
- 25:58right? If you have a soy allergy, you react to soy antigens.
- 26:02So an antigen is basically just a component that makes up a whole.
- 26:10And if it's something that our immune systems react to, then we call it an antigen.
- 26:16Tess, this has been so insightful. It's such an honor to be here with you today.
- 26:21Is there anything we didn't cover that you want to mention before we go?
- 26:25I know we've covered a lot. It's all so important. I guess the only other thing
- 26:28I would like to mention just about polio is about the wastewater surveillance.
- 26:34So, you know, one of the, like I mentioned, I mentioned that there was the man
- 26:38in New York in 2022 who had polio.
- 26:41And so after that case, that town in New York, and of course,
- 26:48the state in general in multiple places started surveilling the wastewater for
- 26:51polio virus, because it's a virus that lives in the intestines and you poop it out.
- 26:55So it's actually one of the easier things to find in wastewater.
- 26:59And so there has been pretty active surveillance for polio in the wastewater.
- 27:04And as of March of this year, that town, which is called Rockland,
- 27:09New York, has not detected any more polio in its wastewater.
- 27:12So they did a big vaccination campaign to try to be sure that the town was adequately
- 27:19immunized against polio in case there were circulating, you know,
- 27:23people who were circulating that viral strain around.
- 27:26And that seems to have been successful because there's no more polio circulating in that wastewater.
- 27:31Wow. So a success story. Yes. People can change.
- 27:35I'm a believer in that. And so say if a parent's listening who their kids did
- 27:40not get the regular vaccines, they haven't gotten the regular vaccines,
- 27:44should they, and now they're teenagers, should they go out and get their kids vaccinated?
- 27:49As an infectious disease doctor, I say yes. There are actually some vaccines
- 27:52that by the time you're a teenager, they don't need those vaccines anymore because
- 27:56the time that they would have been susceptible to those infections has passed.
- 28:00But there may be new ones that they get because we have teenager vaccines too,
- 28:04things that we don't give to the little babies.
- 28:06HPV. Like HPV vaccine, an endococcal vaccine.
- 28:10And so what I would say is if a parent has been not wanting to vaccinate their
- 28:16child for a variety of reasons, I would recommend that they literally like write down their concerns.
- 28:25Like really make a list.
- 28:27Like here, here is the thing that is my concern and talk about it with your pediatrician, right?
- 28:36Because, because it's easy to see a lot of misinformation on the internet.
- 28:42And, and I can guarantee that the vast majority of pediatricians are not like
- 28:49in the pocket of big pharma or something like that.
- 28:53They really just want to keep your child healthy.
- 28:55And that that is their goal is to keep your child healthy. And they're not going
- 29:00to be recommending things that they think are going to hurt your child.
- 29:03And, and so if, if there may be valid concerns that you have,
- 29:09and I think it's important to raise those to truly understand like what,
- 29:15you know, what is the issue?
- 29:16And I'll give you an example that I recently had an encounter with some patients
- 29:21in the hospital and they hadn't vaccinated their child.
- 29:24And I just asked why, like, what was, you know, what was the reason?
- 29:28And they were like, well, it was a religious exemption. And I was like,
- 29:32well, what was the religion?
- 29:35Right? Like, what was that? And they were like, well, we're Muslim.
- 29:40And I was like, okay, so is the concern, because there's,
- 29:45In Islam, there's no religious exemption against giving vaccines in Islam.
- 29:53And I mean, I knew that. It wasn't, you didn't confront them with that.
- 29:56But like, really, what was the concern?
- 29:59And the concern was pork products, right? So gelatin is a pork product.
- 30:05So, you know, which vaccines contain gelatin and which ones don't.
- 30:08So then that really came back to me to be like, well, okay, maybe I should go
- 30:13look up and see which vaccines contain gelatin so I can at least let this family
- 30:17know these are the vaccines that you,
- 30:20you know, from that standpoint, if it's truly an issue of religion and pork,
- 30:24these are the vaccines you don't have to worry about because they don't contain that.
- 30:28These are the vaccines that you may want to avoid because they do contain that.
- 30:32And they may choose or, you know, and if that was truly their reasoning for
- 30:37not doing that, then at least I've given them some information about it.
- 30:43But I think, you know, from a parent standpoint, just being like,
- 30:47oh, we just don't do any vaccines because it's against our religion or whatever the reason is,
- 30:52like, I think it's important to really pin that down because there may be things that,
- 30:59you know, you could protect your child against,
- 31:01but still not violate your religious belief, right and maybe it wouldn't be
- 31:06a hundred percent of things but but I think that we all want to,
- 31:10keep children healthy and keep them protected and.
- 31:14And I think that that's where the pediatrician and the parent can kind of work
- 31:19together to come up with a solution.
- 31:22It doesn't have to be all or nothing if your religious belief is preventing
- 31:27you from getting a certain type of vaccine. Right. It's a great point.
- 31:32What about as adults? If adults weren't vaccinated as children,
- 31:36do you have any advice for the listeners then?
- 31:40Yeah. So I'll tell you, usually what I do with people who have been unvaccinated
- 31:44and are now older, they're either teenagers or adults, is really to kind of
- 31:48be practical about it and like
- 31:49which of the things that you're actually going to be exposed to, right?
- 31:52So like am I, you know, I may not need to vaccinate you against polio if there's
- 31:59no circulating polio and you're not traveling anywhere or whatever.
- 32:03Maybe that's one that I could spare you.
- 32:05But I know that if you are, you know, you like to go out camping or hiking or
- 32:10whatever, you probably need your tetanus vaccine if you've never had a tetanus
- 32:14vaccine, because tetanus is actually ubiquitous in our environment.
- 32:17We just don't see tetanus because we vaccinate people, right?
- 32:21But there are cases of tetanus that pop up every now and then.
- 32:26And, you know, or hepatitis A, such a common foodborne virus,
- 32:31that super effective vaccine that is something you might realistically in San
- 32:36Antonio be getting exposed to.
- 32:38And if you got the vaccines as a child, you got that?
- 32:42It depends on how old you were. So how old about?
- 32:46I don't know the year off the top of my head, but I know that we started,
- 32:53it became part of the routine childhood vaccine series series.
- 32:59In the late 90s, early 2000s, sometime around then, prior to that,
- 33:07hep A vaccine was only for high-risk areas or high-risk people.
- 33:12And so people who were born in 2000-ish or something like that or later probably had it as a child,
- 33:23but people who are older than that maybe didn't have it. So you recommend going out and getting it?
- 33:28Yeah, yeah. What about the Hep B vaccine? I'm a volunteer in the NICU at the
- 33:33University Health's new Women and Children's Hospital.
- 33:36So I just got it. But if you're not working in a health care setting.
- 33:40Yeah, so Hep B is a virus that you get through blood or sexual exposures.
- 33:45And so, yeah, so people who are doing health care work are at a particularly high risk for Hep B.
- 33:51People who are using needles for either drug needles or tattoo needles have
- 34:03a higher risk of getting hep B.
- 34:04And people who have some higher risk sexual activities are at a higher risk for getting hep B.
- 34:11So yeah, so if that applies to somebody, they should consider getting protected against hep B.
- 34:19And the HPV vaccine, is it still, you have to be, it's, if you're older than 44, you can't get that?
- 34:26Yeah. So I, so I.
- 34:29Yeah. I don't, I don't know the upper cutoff since I'm a pediatrician and it
- 34:33used to be, it used to be 26, but then I know that they loosened up those guidelines
- 34:38and I don't, and you know,
- 34:41the, the rationale was really just that like by, by that time you've already
- 34:44had so much HPV that, that the horse is out of the barn.
- 34:48But I think that there are some more recent data suggesting that, you know,
- 34:54HPV vaccine actually enhances your natural immune system dealing with a virus
- 35:03you already have as well.
- 35:05So I don't know what the upper age limit for HPV vaccine.
- 35:09Again as with all other things if you can prevent the
- 35:12thing from getting into you sticking to you
- 35:15when you get exposed to it in the first place
- 35:18it's better than trying to deal with it afterwards so
- 35:21for our parent listeners our pediatrician listeners if you haven't had the hpv
- 35:25vaccine that might be something to look into yeah absolutely and and you definitely
- 35:31for your for your children like no don't wait until they're sexually active
- 35:36to get their hpv vaccine because it's one of the first STDs that comes along.
- 35:41Like get them protected against it before they become sexually active.
- 35:45And that way, it's like one less thing that you have to worry about. Exactly.
- 35:50That's great advice. Anything that we didn't talk about? No, I think that's it.
- 35:55I think my daughter got, it started at age 11, the HPV vaccine.
- 35:59I think now we give it at nine. Wow.
- 36:02If you can convince somebody to take it at nine.
- 36:06Nine-year-olds don't like it. Dr. Tess Barton with University Health and the
- 36:12University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, infectious disease expert.
- 36:16Thank you so much for being here today again on Pediatrics Now. Great. Thanks.
- 36:21We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Pediatrics Now. Click on the link for.
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- 36:31That address is pediatricsnow at uthscsa.edu. We release a new episode every Friday.
- 36:41I'm Holly Wayment. I hope you can join us for our next episode.