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	<title>Health &#38; FamilyCategory: Vaccines &#124; Health &#38; Family &#124; TIME.com</title>
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	<description>A healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit</description>
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		<title>Health &#38; FamilyCategory: Vaccines &#124; Health &#38; Family &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>How Social Networks Influence Parents&#8217; Decision to Vaccinate</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/15/how-social-networks-influence-a-parents-decision-to-vaccinate/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/15/how-social-networks-influence-a-parents-decision-to-vaccinate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:45:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bonnie Rochman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Childhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[friends]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immunity Community]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[parents]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pediatrics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pertussis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine-hesitant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=84576</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At her son’s preschool near Seattle, Robin Haight is a foot soldier in the vaccine wars. She arranged for a pediatrician to speak about vaccines at the home of a school parent. She put up posters — she calls them “gentle propaganda” — that touted the importance of immunization in stopping the spread of disease. Her husband helped create a spreadsheet to track which children at the school are missing which vaccinations. Some parents have said that Haight’s provaccination message has no place at preschool, that it’s disrespectful and patronizing, that the decision to vaccinate a child is nobody else’s business. One mother got so emotional that she broke out in hives. But Haight thinks a conversation is critical, and the latest research published in the journal Pediatrics backs her up. “I’m just trying to let people know that if you don’t vaccinate your children, it might affect other children’s health,” says Haight. “It directly affects a community of young children. How do we not talk about this?” (MORE: Jenny McCarthy, Vaccine Expert? A Quarter of Parents Trust Celebrities) With so much confusing and even misleading information about vaccine safety available on the Internet, it&#8217;s no surprise that parents are influenced by their friends&#8217; attitudes when it comes to immunizing their kids. In the study, researchers surveyed 196 parents of children 18 months or younger in King County — Haight’s stomping ground — which has a vaccination rate that’s typically below the national average and has been gripped by a pertussis epidemic, along with areas in Vermont, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Among the parents in the study, 126 followed the nationally recommended childhood-vaccination schedule from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The 70 other parents forged their own paths: 28 delayed vaccines, 37 partially vaccinated and five didn’t vaccinate at all. At least 95% of parents in both groups indicated that they had consulted their “people network” for insight into making vaccination decisions. Parents reported they paid the most attention to their spouse or partner’s opinion. Pediatricians were next<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=84576&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/15/how-social-networks-influence-a-parents-decision-to-vaccinate/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/84044897.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">brochman</media:title>
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		<title>Multiple Vaccinations on Same Day Does Not Raise Autism Risk</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/29/multiple-vaccinations-on-same-day-does-not-raise-autism-risk/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/29/multiple-vaccinations-on-same-day-does-not-raise-autism-risk/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2013 09:45:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Autism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[childhood immunization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[delayed vaccination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=83228</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Infants now receive several shots at a time, but the latest study says that does not increase their risk of developing autism. About one-third of parents are concerned about unsubstantiated claims that vaccines can cause autism. And although research, including an analysis by the Institute of Medicine, has not found a causal relationship between vaccines and the developmental disorder, one in 10 parents still delay or refuse to vaccinate their children according to the Center for Disease Control&#8217;s childhood immunization schedule. Intuitively, parents believe that the amount of antigens, or immune-activating agents in the shots, over-burden young babies&#8217; still-developing immune systems, making them more vulnerable to developing autism. So many parents &#8220;shot-limit,&#8221; or stagger the immunizations their infants receive, spreading them out rather than vaccinating their children at the recommended 2, 4, and 6 month visits. There is no evidence, however, that delaying the various doses of the 14 different vaccinations recommended in the U.S. are safer for kids. And the latest study investigating the practice, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, continues to show there is no association between autism and receiving &#8220;too many shots too soon.&#8221; The researchers reviewed data involving 256 kids with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 752 without ASDs. By examining their vaccination schedules, the scientists calculated the maximum amount of antigens from the shots each child received during a single doctor&#8217;s visit to determine how stimulated the babies&#8217; immune systems were to create antibodies against the diseases for which they were vaccinated. They also calculated the infants&#8217; overall antigen exposure in three different groupings &#8212; from birth to three months, from birth to seven months, and from birth to two years, by which time most youngsters should have received the bulk of their childhood immunizations. (MORE: Vaccine Safety: Why Parents’ Alternative Immunization Schedules May Cause Harm) For each age grouping, the scientists compared exposure to antibody-producing antigen and risk of ASDs. By age two, most properly vaccinated children should have been exposed to about 315 different antigens from disease-causing agents such as measles, tetanus and pertussis. They<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=83228&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/29/multiple-vaccinations-on-same-day-does-not-raise-autism-risk/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/160428859.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>Protection from Pertussis Vaccine Wanes Over Time</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/11/protection-from-pertussis-vaccine-wanes-over-time/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/11/protection-from-pertussis-vaccine-wanes-over-time/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:00:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bonnie Rochman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[childhood immunization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dtap vaccine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immunization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pertussis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[whooping cough]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=81884</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Changes to pertussis immunization may weaken immunity against whooping cough. In research published in the journal Pediatrics, scientists confirmed that rates of disease increased after the final of five doses of the pertussis vaccine, known as DTaP, climbing successively in each of the following six years. “You get a little less protected with each additional year, the farther out you are from the vaccination,” says Sara Tartof, now a vaccine researcher at Kaiser Permanente Southern California who was at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when she conducted the study. Tartof studied children in Minnesota and Oregon who received all five DTaP doses and compared their health records to data collected from the region on pertussis cases. She and her colleagues found that pertussis increased in children in the six years after they received their final dose, which strongly suggested that immunity to the disease provided by the immunization was weakening. (MORE: Are Vaccines Safe? A Major Media Outlet’s Specious Story Fans the Debate) Children typically receive their final DTaP dose between the ages of 4 and 6, so Tartof zeroed in on pertussis cases occurring in children between the ages of 7 and 10. In Minnesota, she tracked 224,378 children. In the first year after complete immunization, there were 15.6 cases of pertussis per 100,000 children; by the sixth year, the rate was 138.4 cases per 100,000 children. In Oregon, the incidence of pertussis also increased among the 179,011 children followed, although at a slower rate than in Minnesota. That could be due to different surveillance methods or the way pertussis manifests; cases of the disease typically rise and fall in various states. The data mirrored previous data from an outbreak of pertussis in California, which also showed that protection waned after the final dose of the shot. MORE: How Safe Are Vaccines? What was causing the drop in protection? Part of the problem may have to do with the way the vaccine is formulated. About 15 years ago, vaccinologists switched to the acellular vaccine, which includes only<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=81884&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/84044897.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">brochman</media:title>
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		<title>Self-Sabotage: Why Cancer Vaccines Don&#8217;t Work</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/05/self-sabotage-why-cancer-vaccines-dont-work/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/05/self-sabotage-why-cancer-vaccines-dont-work/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:30:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Cancer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Research]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancer vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ifa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine adjuvant]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=81583</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A vaccine that thwarts cancer cells has so far proved to be better in theory than in practice, and researchers may finally understand why.  The possibility of turning the body’s own immune system against tumor cells has hovered like a medical mirage over the cancer-research community for decades. While tumors emerge from healthy cells that start to grow with abandon, they have enough tumor-specific features that should make them easy targets for an alert immune system that’s trained to distinguish between molecular friends and foes. And this idea was supported by several encouraging trials of therapeutic cancer vaccines, which effectively shrank tumors in cell cultures in the lab. But when these promising vaccine candidates, including ones against melanoma and lymphoma, were tested in patients, they invariably disappointed. While they promoted some immune response from the cancer patients, this response wasn’t enough to make a dent in tumors. Now researchers report in the journal Nature Medicine that the vaccines themselves may be at fault. (MORE: A Shot at Cancer) Willem Overwijk, an associate professor in the department of melanoma medical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and his colleagues found that a mineral oil known as incomplete Freund’s adjuvant, or IFA, that is added to cancer vaccines to stimulate the immune system, may do too good a job. IFA effectively activates the body to produce T cells, which are supposed to then target cancer cells and destroy them, shrinking tumors and preventing them from spreading to other locations and seeding new growths. But because the IFA is not biodegradable, it remains under skin at the injection site, acting as an irresistible lure for the T cells. In studies with mice that were injected with a promising vaccine against melanoma, Overwijk was able to document that instead of zeroing in on the tumor, the T cells started to attack the IFA instead. “While the vaccine successfully activates T cells, those T cells then circle back to the injection site where the mineral oil is still sitting under the skin,” says Overwijk. “Very<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=81583&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Cancer</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/cancer/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/98891714bcvaccinecrop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>Why Pregnant Women Should Get Flu Shots</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/why-pregnant-women-should-get-flu-shots/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/why-pregnant-women-should-get-flu-shots/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:45:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dr. Siobhan Dolan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Flu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pregnancy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women's Health]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=80559</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s not too late to get a flu shot – especially if you’re pregnant, say experts at the March of Dimes. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is urging all Americans to get an influenza vaccine, and pregnant women should be at the front of that line. The flu vaccine is safe during pregnancy and can protect both mother and baby from the flu and its possible consequences. Pregnant women are at higher risk of complications from flu because pregnancy takes a toll on their respiratory and immune systems. Pregnant women are more likely to be hospitalized with flu and influenza infections can increase their risk of preterm labor and delivery. Health complications from influenza, such as pneumonia, can be serious and even deadly. Newborns are also at an increased risk of severe illness and even death from the flu.  Nationwide, 64 child deaths have been reported this flu season. (MORE: Pregnant Moms’ Flu Linked to Higher Risk of Autism Among Children) Studies have shown, however, that if mothers are vaccinated during pregnancy their newborns are less likely to become ill with the flu during their first six months. It’s critical for a newborn to have this passive immunity from mom during those early months since it’s not recommended that babies under six months receive a flu shot. Concerns about flu shots having a negative impact on developing babies in utero also seem to be unfounded. Studies that included thousands of pregnant women who received the seasonal flu vaccine found that their babies did not have a higher risk of being born too soon or developing a birth defect when compared with babies born to women who did not get immunized. In fact, researchers found that women who were vaccinated were less likely to suffer a stillbirth compared to those who did not get vaccinated. Based on this evidence, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the March of Dimes, and the CDC all urge pregnant women to get their flu shots to avoid getting infected,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=80559&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Flu</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/flu/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/149320960.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>In Global Push for Vaccination, Moms Give Kids a Shot@Life</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/15/in-global-push-for-vaccination-moms-give-kids-a-shotlife/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/15/in-global-push-for-vaccination-moms-give-kids-a-shotlife/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:45:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bonnie Rochman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Childhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Family & Parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Infectious Disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chicken pox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immunization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mothers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[polio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shot@Life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united nations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=80284</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Moms get things done. They can unload the dishwasher, pack the kids’ lunches, throw in a load of laundry and answer a barrage of emails — all before anyone else in the household awakes. Which is why the United Nations Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign brought 118 mothers — and two dads — to Washington, D.C. this week. Launched in 2012, Shot@Life promotes global vaccination as a way to decrease child mortality in the developing world. Such campaigns have been critical in eradicating polio, for example. But children are still dying from chicken pox and measles — diseases that are preventable with proper immunization. “This issue really resonates with American mothers,” says Devi Thomas, director of Shot@Life. “We are talking about the universality of motherhood.” MORE: How Safe Are Vaccines? Known as “champions,” the Shot@Life mothers arrived on Capitol Hill with a mission to give children in developing countries the same shot at life that their own youngsters have had. They visited the offices of 100 senators and representatives, spreading their message that vaccines are among the most cost-effective ways to save the lives of children around the world. “Every 20 seconds a child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease,” says Dr. Tanya Arora, a pediatrician at UCLA who participated in the training. “When I speak about this to mothers or health care workers, everyone is appalled by these statistics.” Women who attended the training are also encouraged to blog about what they learn and to fund raise within their communities to improve global access to vaccines. For more than a year, Shot@Life staffers have been traversing the country, attending mom-blogger conventions, going to PTA meetings and partnering with Mocha Moms, a support group for African American mothers. Last year, they trained 300 “ambassadors” in 43 states who held 131 events. Salt Lake City moms hosted a Shot@Chocolate party where women sipped tasty shots of liqueur and filled out donation cards. In San Francisco, a mother throwing a birthday party for her daughter decided to request cash for immunization instead of gifts. “It’s<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=80284&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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			<media:title type="html">brochman</media:title>
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		<title>What Researchers Can Learn from a Failed TB Vaccine Trial</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/04/what-researchers-can-learn-from-a-failed-tb-vaccine-trial/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/04/what-researchers-can-learn-from-a-failed-tb-vaccine-trial/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:00:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Infectious Disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aeras]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bcg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bcg vaccine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drug resistant tb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[infectious disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MDR-TB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mva85a]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tb vaccine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tuberculosis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xdr-tb]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=79494</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A highly anticipated trial of a tuberculosis vaccine yields disappointing results. A vaccine designed to protect infants against tuberculosis (TB) isn’t as effective as researchers had hoped. The MVA85A shot, which contains a large snippet of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium, couldn’t mount a strong enough immune response in babies to protect them from infection. In the study, which was conducted in South Africa, 2,797 infants aged four to six months were randomly assigned to receive either the MVA85A shot or a placebo and were followed for up to three years. All lived in areas where there is a high risk of TB infection, so as recommended by public health guidelines, all were also immunized with the existing TB vaccine, known as BCG. Developed 90 years ago, BCG is effective at controlling the type of TB that typically infects adults, primarily in the lungs, but is less effective at protecting young babies, who generally develop a different form of the disease that targets the brain, spine and other organs. In 2011, the World Health Organization reported 8.7 million new cases of TB, and 1.4 million deaths, which indicates how inadequate the current vaccine is in protecting against the disease. MORE: Tuberculosis: An Ancient Disease Continues to Thrive By the end of the study, 32 of the infants receiving the MVA85A vaccine developed TB, while 39 of the those in the control group did. That difference was not statistically significant, meaning that it was likely due to chance. “We were surprised to see no enhancement of protection over BCG alone,” says Dr. Helen McShane, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford and one of the senior authors of the study, published in the journal Lancet. “It wasn’t exactly the answer we were hoping for,” says Dr. Ann Ginsberg, vice president of scientific affairs and acting chief medical officer of Aeres, the company that developed the vaccine. “But nonetheless, it is going to teach us a lot about how to move forward with TB vaccine development, and help guide our work.”<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=79494&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Infectious Disease</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/infectious-disease/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/ngs38_0093.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>5 Things You Should Know About Chicken Pox and Shingles</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/29/5-things-you-should-know-about-chickenpox-and-shingles/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/29/5-things-you-should-know-about-chickenpox-and-shingles/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jan 2013 19:00:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Infectious Disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[barbara walters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[barbara walters chicken pox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chicken pox]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chicken pox vaccine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[herpes zoster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shingles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[varicella zoster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[zostavax]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=79080</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Barbara Walters&#8217; co-hosts on The View informed viewers that Walters has been hospitalized with the chicken pox. She&#8217;s 83, and the infection, which is more common among young children, is rare among older adults. According to her co-host Whoopi Goldberg, Walters has never had chicken pox before. The news raised questions about how likely adults are to get chicken pox and how chicken pox is related to a condition that&#8217;s more common among adults, shingles. So here are some quick facts about the infections. (MORE: Study: Kids’ Chicken-Pox Vaccine Helps Protect Babies Too) If you never had chicken pox as a child, can you still get the infection as an adult? Yes. Although most cases of chicken pox occur before age 10, adults who have never contracted the infection are still at risk. Can chicken pox be more severe in adults? Most people get chicken pox when they are young, but the symptoms can be more severe among people who catch the infection in an older age. They include loss of appetite, fever, headache, tiredness and rashes, all of which can be more taxing on the health of elderly adults. What is shingles, and how is it different from chicken pox? Shingles, also known as zoster or herpes zoster, is a painful skin rash caused by the same virus responsible for chicken pox: the varicella zoster virus. Even if you had chicken pox in the past, you can still contract shingles. That&#8217;s because the chicken-pox virus remains in the body, lying dormant in the roots of nerves, and can reactivate many years later. It&#8217;s not clear why the virus reawakens — in some people it never does — but researchers believe that the virus is triggered as the immune system weakens with age or in conditions of stress. About 1 out of 3 people in the U.S. is affected by shingles at some point in their lives, with the majority of cases occurring in men and women ages 60 and older. Shingles is less contagious than chicken pox and cannot be passed from<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=79080&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Infectious Disease</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/infectious-disease/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/hl-chickenpox-0129.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Chickenpox</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/dd9dc95ff828efb70c16a5a509a75150?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>The Final Battle Against Polio?</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/03/the-final-battle-against-polio/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/03/the-final-battle-against-polio/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:30:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=77115</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s no one place a virus goes to die — but that doesn&#8217;t make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out. In the developed world, vaccines have made once-common scourges such as measles, rubella, mumps and whooping cough rare to the point of near-extinction. Only once, however, has any virus been flushed from its last redoubts in both the body and the wild and effectively vaccinated out of existence. That virus was smallpox, which ceased to exist outside high-security labs in 1977. Since that day, humanity has been free to put the vaccines against the disease — and the terror its periodic outbreaks would cause — on the shelf forever. Now we are tantalizingly close to another such epic moment. This time the disease in the medical cross hairs is polio, and there&#8217;s no minimizing the progress made against it. Just 25 years ago, polio was endemic to 125 countries and would paralyze or kill up to 350,000 people — the overwhelming majority of them children —  each year. Now the disease has been run to ground in just three countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria, and in 2012, it struck only 215 people worldwide. Thanks to aggressive global vaccination programs led by Rotary International, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and, most recently, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the year just beginning could be the disease&#8217;s last. (TIME: Read the magazine story on polio, available to subscribers here) But polio still has strong-armed friends. On January 1, as the rest of the world celebrated the New Year, gunmen in Pakistan shot and killed seven medical aid workers — six of them women or girls — who had been part of the anti-polio drive. Those killings followed nine others in December, as well as the shooting of a Ghanaian doctor, also conducting polio-vaccination work in<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=77115&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/polio_diegoibarra_14.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Pakistan against the polio</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Experts Argue to Keep Thimerosal in Some Vaccines</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/17/experts-argue-to-keep-thimerosal-in-some-vaccines/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/17/experts-argue-to-keep-thimerosal-in-some-vaccines/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:50:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=76334</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The mercury component was removed from most childhood vaccines, but doctors say an international ban would put more youngsters at risk of infectious diseases. The U.N. Environment Program is discussing ways to lower environmental exposure to mercury, a chemical linked to developmental problems. Part of the proposal involves removing thimerosal, a mercury-based compound used as a preservative to maintain vaccine quality, from immunizations given to children around the world. The proposed ban could potentially create a situation in which thimerosal-containing immunizations, with their potential but still unknown health risks, are concentrated in lower-resource countries while developed nations rely on thimerosal-free shots, owing primarily to more robust health systems that allow better storage and preservation of the immunizations. Adding to the growing controversy over the proposed policy, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) endorsed a World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation to continue the use of thimerosal in vaccines. Since the 1930s, thimerosal has been used to prevent bacteria contamination of multidose vaccines like those against pertussis (whooping cough). In 1999, the AAP and the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) called for the removal of thimerosal amid concerns the compound was associated with higher rates of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. Flu vaccines are among the only shots given to children that still contain the mercury-based compound. (MORE: How Safe Are Vaccines?) However, in three papers published in the journal Pediatrics, a group of experts, including a former member of the AAP board of directors back in 1999, say there is now a lack of evidence that thimerosal causes these problems, and that the benefits of keeping thimerosal in vaccines to maintain their quality outweigh any potential health problems associated with exposure to small amount of mercury used. In the past 15 years, studies have found no significant harms linked to thimerosal, and in 2002 the AAP retired its original recommendation against it. In the new statement, the AAP experts argue thimerosal should not be banned, noting that the preservative is critical for developing countries that rely on the chemical as an inexpensive method to preserve vaccines.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=76334&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/98891714-1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">98891714 (1)</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>Protection from Whooping Cough Vaccine Wanes Over Time</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/29/protection-from-whooping-cough-vaccine-wanes-over-time/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/11/29/protection-from-whooping-cough-vaccine-wanes-over-time/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Laura Blue</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Infectious Disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prevention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[immunity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immunization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[outbreak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pertussis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccination]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[whooping cough]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=74911</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The latest report shows not all children are receiving the recommended five doses of pertussis vaccine, but even among those who are, the effectiveness of the immunization wears off. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that while vaccines do work well in protecting against childhood infection with the pertussis bacterium, or whooping cough, that the strongest immunization occurred among kids in the year after their last shot than among those who finished their full immunization series more than five years ago. This is the first-ever study to test the long-term effectiveness of current pertussis vaccines, which contain snippets of the pertussis bacterium and were introduced in the 1990s. The newer shots trigger fewer adverse reactions than previous versions, which contained whole pertussis bacterial cells, but public health officials had been concerned that the effectiveness of the shots weakened over time. The findings are significant in light of the major pertussis outbreaks in the U.S. over the past few years, which have caused illness in tens of thousands nationwide. Earlier this year, the CDC recommended that adults over age 19 also receive another dose of the older, whole cell pertussis vaccine to maintain immunity against the bacterium. Pertussis is highly contagious and sometimes fatal; symptoms including violent, uncontrollable coughing that can lead to breathing problems, pneumonia and convulsions. MORE: How Safe Are Vaccines? For the new study, CDC researchers analyzed data from California&#8217;s major epidemic in 2010, the largest outbreak of the disease in that state for more than 60 years. Comparing 682 kids with confirmed or suspected pertussis to  more than 2,000 healthy kids, researchers could conduct a thorough investigation of the vaccine&#8217;s effectiveness. &#8220;We saw that there was high effectiveness for these vaccines in the short term and they continue to work well,&#8221; says CDC epidemiologist Lara Misegades, the lead study author. &#8220;They are our best tool for preventing pertussis.&#8221; Overall, the study shows, kids with pertussis are eight times as likely to be unvaccinated as healthy<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=74911&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/91559317pertussiscrop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Child receiving vaccination</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a069e8b4ff0dc386def0882f71bbfee6?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">Laura Blue</media:title>
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		<title>HPV Vaccine Doesn&#8217;t Lead To Promiscuous Tweens</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/15/hpv-vaccine-doesnt-lead-to-promiscuous-tweens/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/15/hpv-vaccine-doesnt-lead-to-promiscuous-tweens/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HPV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hpv vaccine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=71424</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Girls who are vaccinated for human papillomavirus (HPV) are no more likely to engage in sexually risky behaviors than girls who don&#8217;t receive the vaccine, says a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics. While the HPV vaccine protects against cervical cancer, it&#8217;s also effective in fighting genital warts caused by the virus. For that reason, the fact that the injection is given to girls aged 11-12 as part of the childhood vaccination schedule made some parents uncomfortable with the fact that adolescents were being targeted for a sexually transmitted disease. Some feared it would even give pre-teens a false sense of security and encourage them to become sexually active. In order to assess whether HPV vaccination (there are two shots, Gardasil and Cervarix) is associated with changes in sexual behavior, researchers from the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research and Emory University followed over 1,000 girls who were members of the Kaiser Permanente health plan in Georgia in 2006 and 2007, during the first 18 months the Gardasil vaccine was available. Among the participants, 493 had received at least one dose of the vaccine, which requires three doses over six months, and the other 905 girls received another adolescent vaccine that was not HPV-related. MORE: With the HPV Vaccine, Two Doses May Be Just as Good as Three The researchers followed the girls for three years and tracked their behaviors associated with sexual activity such as being tested for or diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (STI), taking a pregnancy test and receiving counseling on contraceptives. They found no differences between these sexual activity outcomes among girls who were vaccinated and those who were not. (MORE: Government Panel Recommends HPV Vaccine for Boys) Overall, about 10% of the total participants had one of the sexual activity outcomes and less than 1% were diagnosed with an STI or had a positive pregnancy test. The vaccinated girls did not have a higher rate of counseling, testing or diagnosis. &#8220;If HPV vaccination was “a license for sex,” we would have expected to<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=71424&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/91530606.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">91530606</media:title>
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		<media:content url="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/dd9dc95ff828efb70c16a5a509a75150?s=96&#38;d=http%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fmu.gif&#38;r=G" medium="image">
			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>An Experimental Cervical Cancer Vaccine Shows Promise</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/11/an-experimental-cervical-cancer-vaccine-shows-promise/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/11/an-experimental-cervical-cancer-vaccine-shows-promise/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:15:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cervical cancer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HPV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=71343</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a small clinical trial, a therapeutic vaccine from Pennsylvania company Inovio Pharmaceuticals showed promise for treating precancerous cervical lesions in women with HPV. Most cases of cervical cancer are caused by two high-risk strains of HPV, or human papillomavirus: HPV 16 and 18. The experimental vaccine, known as VGX-3100, is designed to encourage the body&#8217;s immune system to get rid of cells that have been altered by these HPV strains. Using a technique similar to gene therapy, the vaccine inserts DNA into the patient&#8217;s cells, which then encourages an immune response against cells that have been altered by HPV. In the recent study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, 18 women were given three doses of the vaccine. Fourteen women showed a robust cellular response to the vaccine. That is, the vaccine stimulated the production of killer T-cells, immune system cells that attack invaders, including precancerous cervical cells affected by HPV. (MORE: Gardasil: No Serious Health Concerns Linked with HPV Vaccine) “Our immune system is capable of protecting us from millions of pathogens,” J. Joseph Kim, president and chief executive of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, told the New York Times. “We want to use the existing hardware in our immune system, but use better software to train our immune system to fight off disease.” HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S.; the CDC reports that at least 50% of sexually active men and women get it at some point in their lives. In 90% of cases, the body naturally clears HPV on its own within two years. But if infection persists, some strains of HPV can cause genital warts, while others can lead to cancer, including cervical cancer and cancers of the vulva, vagina, penis, anus and throat. The new study was a preliminary study designed to assess safety, not efficacy, so further research needs to be done to figure out whether the experimental vaccine can actually eliminate precancerous lesions. If the research continues to hold up, however, it could potentially help thousands of women who are at risk of<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=71343&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/98891714.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">98891714</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>Gardasil: No Serious Health Concerns Linked with HPV Vaccine</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/02/gardasil-no-serious-health-concerns-linked-with-hpv-vaccine/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/02/gardasil-no-serious-health-concerns-linked-with-hpv-vaccine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:44:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HPV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=70533</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Merck&#8217;s HPV vaccine, Gardasil, was found to be safe in a large safety study required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The vaccine did cause fainting on the day of the shot and skin infections two weeks later in some women — known short-term side effects of the vaccine. It was not associated with serious health effects. Gardasil protects against four strains of the sexually transmitted HPV, or human papillomavirus, two of which are the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. HPV is also linked with genital warts, vaginal cancer and, in men, oral cancers. Most HPV infections, with lower-risk strains, will usually clear on their own within two years, however. Merck&#8217;s vaccine was first approved by the FDA in 2006 for girls and women ages 9 to 26, and is now approved also for boys and men. Federal vaccine guidelines recommend the three-dose for boys and girls before they become sexually active, around age 11 or 12. Follow-up studies such as this one are the norm to highlight any potentially overlooked side effects of widely-used drugs or vaccines. (MORE: Government Panel Recommends HPV Vaccine for Boys) The new study, published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics &#38; Adolescent Medicine, researchers looked at the medical records of 189,629 girls and women ages 9 to 26 within the Northern and Southern California Kaiser Permanente health care systems. All the women received at least one dose of Gardasil between August 2006 and March 2008. By the end of the study period, 44,000 participants had received the recommended three doses of the vaccine. The researchers examined the rate of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for women in the two weeks following their vaccination and again a couple months later. Aside from some episodes of fainting and skin infections, the authors found no other safety concerns. There were some reports of seizures and allergic reactions, but a five-member safety committee of medical experts with no ties to the Kaiser study team or Merck and Co., which funded the study, concluded that these reactions were not related to the vaccine. (MORE: HPV Linked<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=70533&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/125767581.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">HPV Vaccinations Back In Spotlight After Perry Joins Presidential Race</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>At the U.N., a Vow to Eradicate Polio by 2015</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/27/polio-u-n-firepower-against-an-ancient-scourge/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/27/polio-u-n-firepower-against-an-ancient-scourge/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:13:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jeffrey Kluger</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Global Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Infectious Disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prevention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Asif Zardari]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ban Ki-moon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Gates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eradication]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Goodluck Jonathan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamid Karzai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inoculation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nigeria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[polio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Salk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=70307</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Peter Salk and Aseefa Zardari never met before today, but they have an odd and very significant thing in common: both of them were inoculated against polio by one of their parents. In the case of Salk, of course, it was his father Jonas, who administered his just-developed vaccine to himself, his lab workers and his family even before it was formally approved and released. Aseefa&#8217;s inoculator was her mother, the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in 2007. &#8220;I have a picture of my wife immunizing our daughter 18 years ago,&#8221; said Asif Zardari, the current President and Aseefa&#8217;s father, at a United Nations gathering this afternoon. &#8220;My martyred wife told the world she dreamt of a world in which all children are free of disease.&#8221; Father, daughter and Salk had come to the U.N. as part of a new international push to eradicate polio once and for all, and they were hardly alone. Also in attendance were U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; Afghan President Hamid Karzai; Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan; Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard; U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; and — significantly — Bill Gates, head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. All of them and others addressed a plenary session of the U.N.&#8217;s Economic and Social Council, and all of them had a single promise: by 2015, if not earlier, polio would join smallpox as the only diseases in human history to be finally and fully snuffed out in the wild. (MORE: Polio&#8217;s Back. Why Now?) There was an odd-seeming disconnect between the financial and institutional firepower assembled today and the actual, lingering incidence of polio. In 1952, three years before the Salk vaccine was introduced, 52,000 children were paralyzed or killed in the U.S. alone. In 1988, polio was endemic in more than 120 countries, still afflicting an average of 350,000 people — mostly children — per year. Today, the disease is endemic in just three countries — Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria — and only in isolated pockets<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=70307&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/hl_polio_0927.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">An Afghan refugee woman waits her turn to receive a drop of polio vaccine for her child at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) supported Jalozai camp on the outskirts of Peshawar</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">jkluger</media:title>
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		<title>Whooping Cough Vaccine Wanes Over Time</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/13/whooping-cough-vaccine-wanes-over-time/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/13/whooping-cough-vaccine-wanes-over-time/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Sep 2012 12:00:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Infectious Disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[childhood immunizations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dtap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pertussis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pertussis outbreaks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tdap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[whooping cough]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=68835</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Weakening of protection from the whooping cough vaccine helps explain the recent resurgence of the disease in the U.S.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=68835&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/138307605pertussiscrop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Baby getting vaccinated</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>Why Lack of Sleep May Weaken Vaccine Effectiveness</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/01/why-lack-of-sleep-weakens-vaccine-effectiveness/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/01/why-lack-of-sleep-weakens-vaccine-effectiveness/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:00:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sleep]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sleep deprivation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=65192</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Skimping out on sleep won&#8217;t just put you in a cranky mood. It may also reduce the effectiveness of vaccines, a new study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), suggests. The authors say their study is the first real-world look at the link between sleep duration and immune response to vaccines. Rather than analyzing participants in a sleep clinic, the researchers tracked the regular day-to-day sleep patterns of their middle-aged participants and then studied them to see how strong an immune response they mounted to a standard three-dose hepatitis B vaccine. People getting less than six hours of sleep per night on average were far less likely than longer sleepers to show adequate antibody responses to the vaccine, the researchers found, and so they were far more likely — 11.5 times more likely — to be unprotected by the immunization. &#8220;This study shows clear evidence of a link between amount of sleep and an immune process relevant to infectious disease risk,&#8221; says lead author Dr. Aric Prather, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health &#38; Society Scholar at UCSF and U.C. Berkeley. (MORE: Can’t Sleep? You May Be Afraid of the Dark) The implications may be widespread for a society in which sleep deprivation is so commonplace: 30% of Americans get less than the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, many of us kept awake by the glow of a TV or computer screen, or insomnia, stress or the demands of work. There&#8217;s mounting evidence that our chronic sleeplessness wreaks havoc on other aspects of our health too: studies have associated inadequate sleep with weight gain, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and even breast cancer. The risks may be related to changes in hormone levels due to disruptions to the body’s internal clock. When people are sleep deprived — especially for those who work night shifts and sleep during the day — the body’s circadian rhythm is thrown out of whack, which in turn alters levels of the hormone melatonin. Normally, melatonin rises at night<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=65192&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/01/why-lack-of-sleep-weakens-vaccine-effectiveness/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/138711672.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">138711672</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>U.S. Whooping Cough Cases Could Be Worst in More than 50 Years</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/19/u-s-whooping-cough-cases-could-be-worst-in-more-than-50-years/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/19/u-s-whooping-cough-cases-could-be-worst-in-more-than-50-years/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 19 Jul 2012 21:51:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alexandra Sifferlin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Infectious Disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[epidemic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pertussis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[whooping cough]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=64298</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Pertussis, more commonly known as whooping cough, is making a major comeback across the U.S. The country is on track to reach the highest number of cases since 1959<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=64298&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Vaccines</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/vaccines-medicine/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/104718836-1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">104718836-1</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">asifferlin</media:title>
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		<title>H1N1 Vaccines Linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome but Not Birth Defects</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/11/h1n1-vaccines-linked-to-guillain-barre-syndrome-but-not-birth-defects/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/11/h1n1-vaccines-linked-to-guillain-barre-syndrome-but-not-birth-defects/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:45:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Flu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[birth defects]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[guillain-barre syndrome]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[H1N1]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immunization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[influenza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[swine flu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccination]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=63756</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How safe are flu vaccines? Two new studies show that the H1N1 vaccine poses no risk of birth defects when given to pregnant women, but does slightly increase the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a reversible autoimmune disorder, in patients over 50. In the studies, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, scientists tracked the rates of birth defects and developmental problems such as low birth weight and preterm birth in babies born to Danish women who were vaccinated against H1N1 in 2009-10 during pregnancy. A separate group of scientists in Quebec looked at the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome in millions of people given the vaccine in Canada, also in 2009-10. In the study that focused on Guillain-Barre, Philippe De Wals, a professor of social and preventive medicine at Laval University in Canada, and his colleagues included 4.4 million people in Quebec who received the H1N1 vaccine as part of a mass immunization program during the 2009 &#8220;swine flu&#8221; pandemic; they were all vaccinated over a six-month period from October 2009 to March 2010. (SPECIAL: What You Need to Know About the H1N1 Vaccine) Researchers tracked rates of Guillain-Barre infection for up to eight weeks following vaccination, and found a very small increase in risk in vaccinated people: overall, there were 83 confirmed cases of Guillain-Barre, including 25 among people who had received the H1N1 vaccine. The risk of developing the syndrome, in which the body’s own immune system attacks the nerves, was doubled among vaccinated people, compared with the general population. But the absolute risk was small: based on the data, the authors calculated that about 2 people would be expected to develop Guillain-Barre per every million who were vaccinated — a risk that was limited to adults over 50. “Doubling of a very low risk is still a very low risk,” says De Wals. “The one or two chance per million doses of getting Guillain-Barre is much lower than the chances of getting influenza, being hospitalized and dying of the flu.” The connection between H1N1 vaccines and<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=63756&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Flu</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/flu/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/96156843h1n1crop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Hand w/needle</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">apark7</media:title>
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		<title>Hope for Quitters? Scientists Devise a New Nicotine Vaccine</title>
		<link>http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/28/hope-for-quitters-scientists-devise-a-new-nicotine-vaccine/</link>
		<comments>http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/28/hope-for-quitters-scientists-devise-a-new-nicotine-vaccine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2012 12:01:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Alice Park</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tobacco]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vaccines]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Addiction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nicotine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[smoking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vaccine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://healthland.time.com/?p=62946</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers are getting closer to developing a vaccine that could help protect people from the addictiveness of nicotine. The novel vaccine, which has so far been tested only in mice, prompts the body to manufacture an antibody that is attracted to nicotine. The antibodies patrol the bloodstream, soaking up the chemical and preventing it from reaching receptors in the reward centers of the brain, thereby countering the pleasure and addictiveness of smoking. Nicotine vaccines have been tried before but failed because researchers couldn&#8217;t maintain high enough levels of antibody in smokers&#8217; blood to block the drug&#8217;s effect. One previous attempt, called NicVax, delivered nicotine encased in a cholera toxin directly to the body in hopes that the immune system would recognize the invader and make antibodies against it. Problem is, nicotine is too small a molecule to trigger the robust immune response needed to inhibit its addictive effects. So, rather than delivering nicotine itself, or ready-made antibodies against it, researchers led by Dr. Ronald Crystal, chairman of the department of genetic medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, tried a different method: gene therapy. Crystal and his colleagues&#8217; approach involved using a cold virus to ferry in the genes needed to make the nicotine antibody; the vaccine also contained instructions for infecting the liver, which is a factory for churning out proteins and other compounds. Once the vaccine infected liver cells, they began producing copy after copy of the antibody and releasing them into the bloodstream. (MORE: Why It&#8217;s Never Too Late to Quit Smoking) In the mouse experiments, the scientists found that inoculated animals were still making the antibody weeks after receiving the vaccine. They also showed that when vaccinated mice were injected with nicotine, the antibodies in their blood bound to it and prevented it from getting to the brain. Compared with mice treated with placebo, those that got the vaccine had less nicotine in their blood and just a fraction — 15% — of the chemical in their brains. The scientists further studied the animals&#8217; activity in their<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=healthland.time.com&#038;blog=8684427&#038;post=62946&#038;subd=timewellness&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Tobacco</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://healthland.time.com/category/medicine/tobacco/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timewellness.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/82619689nicotinevaccrop.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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