and have shown up in , and both are preventable if children get the . But some doctors are concerned that people may be not be aware of the third illness included in the MMR vaccine acronym. The R stands for rubella, also known as German measles.
Dr. Jason Bowling is an expert in at . He said it鈥檚 easy to forget about because it usually causes a much more mild infection.
He said a lot of people with rubella have no symptoms at all, but that is what makes rubella dangerous, particularly to pregnant women.
Pregnant women who get rubella may never know they鈥檙e sick, but it almost certainly means serious complications for their pregnancies. It can cause
鈥淚t can include early delivery, fetal death, and then there can also be congenital malformations,鈥� Bowling said, 鈥渁nd the more common ones cause heart defects, cataracts and hearing impairment.鈥�
According to the , an estimated 12.5 million people contracted rubella during the last epidemic in the United States in 1964 and 1965. Eleven thousand pregnant women lost their babies, 2,100 newborns died and 20,000 babies were born with defects associated with congenital rubella syndrome.
A small but growing group of parents in the U.S. have rejected the MMR vaccine for their children in recent decades.
The movement gathered steam in the '90s when British doctor Andrew Wakefield linked vaccines to in a since-discredited study.
That means some unvaccinated 鈥淲akefield babies鈥� are now old enough to have their own children, and Bowling said if measles and mumps are out there now, rubella probably is too, but it鈥檚 too mild to concern scientists.
Bowling said he feared rubella won鈥檛 receive the required attention until babies are born with birth defects associated with the virus.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to wait until we鈥檙e seeing malformations or increased fetal losses and then attributing it to rubella infections,鈥� Bowling said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the wrong way to figure out that this is a problem. We need to work on getting improved vaccine uptake now.鈥�
Bowling stressed that women can鈥檛 wait to get the vaccine until they鈥檙e pregnant. It is a live virus vaccine, meaning it contains a weakened live form of the virus to teach your immune system to fight it, and it is not recommended during pregnancy.
He said unvaccinated women considering having a baby should get the MMR vaccine before they get pregnant.
Bonnie Petrie can be reached at Bonnie@TPR.org and on Twitter at .
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