Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Meningitis Vaccine Extended to Infants

I'm off to the ASJA Conference this week to moderate a panel on using widgets to maximize your blog (ahem, see the widget on the right for a link to the conference info). But this week's food for thought is the menigococcal disease vaccine Menactra, generally given to tweens and teens (and sometimes to at-risk children as young as 2), which the FDA just approved for children as young as 9 months old.

Will parents get the two-dose vaccine to help prevent bacterial meningitis in their young children - a rare but frightening disease that progresses so fast that it can outrun antibiotics? Or will they turn down the vaccine because there are already so many other vaccines on the CDC schedule for children under 2 years old? I'm wondering how this will play out.

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