Sunshine: Bye-Bye Repetitive Ear Infections!

I am very sure that every mother gets upset when their child gets ear infections day after day. Well, now, thanks to a new vaccine called PVC7 (Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine), children will have less chance of getting repetitive ear infections. This vaccine was introduced in the United States in 2000 as a vaccine that can fight common bacterial diseases. Katherine Poehling, a pediatrician at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and also the author of this research, was very excited about how PVC7 was working beyond expectations. This vaccine is sold under the brand name Prevnar in the United States and Prevenar in other parts of the world. The vaccination of Prevnar is done at the ages of two, four and six months of children and it prevents ear infections that happen three or four times a year to almost a third of all children before the age of two. I was very excited to read this part of the article since I know how painful ear infections can be and I have witnessed one of my family members suffer from them at a young age. I’m glad that children can now prevent these ear infections by taking this vaccine. In addition, Prevnar helps adults and children fight back serious infections like pneumococcal meningitis. So, Prevnar is a vaccine that adults can be happy about too! To see exactly how much Prevnar has helped, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics looked at data of 150,000 children in Tennessee and 26,409 children in upstate New York who were enrolled in health insurance programs from birth to the age of five. They found that the proportion of children who obtained several ear infections and the proportion of children who received ear tubes by the age of two had declined by 16 percent in Tennessee and 25 percent in New York after the vaccine was introduced. Poehling was very happy to hear this, but she still feels public health officials need to keep an eye on pneumococcal strains that are not included in the vaccine so that they do not become a problem to the children and adults. All in all, the introduction of Prevnar will definitely benefit many lives in the future.