Rubella is a viral disease that affects mainly children. The virus is transmitted by airborne droplets from person to person and is highly contagious. But the disease itself does not cause very serious symptoms, it is easily tolerated and, with the current level of development of medicine, can be cured quickly. The danger of rubella is that it has a teratogenic effect. That is, if a woman gets sick during pregnancy, it causes various pathologies of fetal development and malformation of the fetus. A rubella vaccine will help prevent this problem. For prevention, vaccinations are given to girls 13-15 years old, which contributes to the development of resistance to infection over the next 10 years.
What is rubella?
This is an infectious disease that is transmitted by airborne droplets in close contact from person to person. Its feature is the longest incubation period. The danger of infection increases in crowded groups, for example, in kindergartens, barracks, and rest homes. Rubella with high fever, general intoxication, swollen lymph nodes, sore throat and cough. The main symptom of the disease is a characteristic rash throughout the body that disappears after a few days without a trace. This disease is easy and rarely causes complications.
Therefore, many people do not know what rubella is. Although this disease is quite dangerous for pregnant women. The virus easily penetrates the placental barrier and causes serious harm to the baby. Infection causes the development of congenital malformations and can lead to the death of the child. More than 60% of babies who have had rubella in the prenatal period are born with deafness, cataracts, heart defects, or brain damage.
Why is it important to get a rubella vaccine?
This disease is rapidly transmitted by contact with an infected person. The danger is that the patient becomes contagious 2 weeks before the onset of obvious signs of the disease and 1-2 weeks after recovery. Rubella is easily tolerated by both adults and children and lasts a week without special treatment. Therefore, 20 years ago it was not considered necessary to vaccinate everyone. Vaccination was carried out mainly for children, so outbreaks of infection are now very rare.
But recent studies have shown that if a woman does not have immunity to this virus, she can easily become infected during pregnancy. And this can lead to miscarriage, the birth of a dead child or various malformations of the fetus. This condition was called SLE - congenital rubella syndrome. Therefore, for more than ten years, the rubella vaccine has been introduced in many countries as mandatory. This is the only way to prevent pregnancy complications due to infection.
Rubella vaccination rules
To completely eradicate rubella as an infectious disease, almost everyone needs to be vaccinated. For this, vaccination is carried out when the child is one year old, then repeated at 6 years old. Vaccination for infants is not advisable, as they are given immunity from the mother, and the vaccine strain will be neutralized by antibodies. For the same reason, it is recommended to do revaccination in 6-7 years. If antibodies to rubella are present in the blood, vaccination is not necessary. If for some reason the vaccination is not done at the right time, it can be done at any age after a year. In this case, revaccination is needed no earlier than after 6 years.
This approach contributes to the formation of persistent immunity in children, but it takes at least 20 years to completely eradicate rubella in the country. Therefore, in order to prevent SLE, teenage girls of 13-15 years old, as well as women of childbearing age, are vaccinated. Many countries strictly monitor that women from 18 to 35 years old who have not had rubella and have not been vaccinated before should be vaccinated. In France, they even refuse to register a marriage without a vaccination mark.
In addition, vaccination is carried out for other groups of the population according to epidemiological indications, for example, in groups with high crowding. It is also recommended to vaccinate close relatives of a woman planning a pregnancy so as not to expose her to danger of infection.
Vaccine response
Side effects after a rubella vaccine are rare, and they are usually easily tolerated. It does not even require special therapy, since all the negative phenomena pass by themselves in a few days. The vaccine response can be local and general. Local side effects include soreness and tightness at the injection site. Sometimes there may be redness and slight swelling.
Even less common are the common side effects:
- skin rash;
- a slight increase in temperature;
- enlargement of the cervical lymph nodes;
- weakness, headache;
- respiratory effects;
- nausea, abdominal pain;
- decrease in platelet count in the blood;
- short-term arthralgia, mainly of the knee or wrist joints;
- in adolescence, sometimes arthritis or polyneuritis;
- aseptic meningitis or encephalitis can very rarely develop.
Typically, these phenomena appear from 5 to 15 days after vaccination. Most often, complications occur in adolescents and adults. People with hypersensitivity and allergies can have an immediate reaction to a vaccination in the form of urticaria, anaphylactic shock, or Quincke's edema. When vaccinating such patients, it is necessary to ensure medical supervision for at least half an hour.
In addition, there are cases that an already infected child is vaccinated. In this case, the appearance of symptoms of the disease is taken as post-vaccination complications. Although this is also not excluded, approximately 10% of patients after vaccination tolerate rubella in a very mild form.
Contraindications to vaccination
Unfortunately, it is not possible to reach 100% of the population with rubella vaccines. Like any other drugs, rubella vaccines have their contraindications. Time constraints that force vaccination to be postponed for some time include exacerbation of chronic diseases and acute illnesses. No vaccinations are given for three months after the administration of blood products or immunoglobulins. You can not vaccinate for about a year after radiation therapy and taking immunosuppressants. Inoculation is also not done during pregnancy. It is advisable to be protected from conception 3 months after vaccination.
Rubella vaccination is completely contraindicated in such cases:
- with immunodeficiency;
- oncological diseases;
- blood diseases
- severe allergic reaction to the previous vaccination;
- with intolerance to "Kanamycin", "Neomycin" and "Monomycin";
- with allergies to chicken egg protein.
How to prevent complications
Despite the fact that rubella vaccine rarely causes negative effects, it is very important for parents to follow the basic rules of vaccination. Often, complications arise not because of a poor-quality drug, but through the fault of the patient. Therefore, be sure to consult a doctor before vaccination. The specialist should examine the child, determine if there are any contraindications. In addition, a few days before and after vaccination, you need to limit contact with people to prevent infection.
It is also important to know which rubella vaccine is given to the child. The name of the drug can be obtained from the injection nurse. The possibility of developing complications depends on this. For example, negative reactions most often occur after the Priorix vaccine. Parents need to find out everything about this drug, about the complications that it can cause.
How to vaccinate
Any rubella vaccine is available in two bottles: in one, the drug itself in dried form, in the other a special solvent. Connect them with a sterile syringe, mix well, avoiding foaming. The vaccine should completely dissolve until a clear liquid is obtained. This usually takes 3 minutes. Before use, you need to check the vaccine for the expiration date and violation of the integrity of the package. Such preparations require special storage conditions, in violation of which they can not be used.
After dilution, the vaccine must be used immediately; it cannot be stored. Typically, a single dose of the drug is 0.5 ml. A three-component vaccine is injected subcutaneously, a single drug can be administered intramuscularly. Typically, an injection is made into the shoulder or under the shoulder blade. Only in rare cases, for example, small children can be vaccinated in the thigh. Rubella vaccine is not given to the gluteus maximus, since local side effects often develop there.
The live rubella vaccine goes well with some others: with measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus. True, they cannot be mixed in the same syringe and you need to enter them in different places. And if necessary, vaccination with other live vaccines, the interval between them should be at least a month.
What are the rubella vaccines?
Vaccinations for this disease have been done for over 40 years, but only after 2002 did they become mandatory. All vaccines contain a live attenuated, i.e. attenuated, strain of the virus. Just one injection provides immunity in 95% of people, the same as after a natural infection.
Now vaccines against rubella can be either monovalent, aimed at protecting against a single virus, or multicomponent. They are mainly combined with measles, mumps, or chickenpox vaccines. In Russia, the most common rubella vaccine is used, or imported drugs containing a weakened virus. These are the Belgian Priorix and Hervevax, as well as the French Rudivax. In addition, another Indian or Croatian vaccine is used. The American drug, MMR, which is a three-component, is rarely used.
Russian vaccines
Domestic preparations are often used for routine vaccination of children and adults. They are inexpensive, and in terms of efficiency and safety they are in no way inferior to imported analogues. Such vaccines contain a live strain of rubella virus, attenuated and dried. These single drugs rarely cause complications and are easily tolerated even by young children. Their only drawback is that with routine immunization, many injections are required. But such vaccines are well suited for vaccinating girls and adults.
Priorix Vaccine
Most often used for immunization of children at the age of one year and at 6 years of age a three-component vaccination: rubella, mumps and measles. These diseases are a bit similar, so it became possible to combine the virus strains in one drug. This is convenient, as it takes only one injection. For such a vaccine, Priorix, a Belgian-made vaccine, is used. It contains attenuated live strains of measles, rubella and mumps viruses .
This vaccine is used to protect a person from these three infections. But Priorix is a vaccine that can also be used if the child has already had one of these diseases. In this case, immunity is generated to a virus that is new to the body, and already known ones will be inactivated. Clinical trials have shown that 98% of vaccinees receive antibodies to measles virus, and more than 99% to rubella. Moreover, immunity persists in all cases after a year, starting to decline only after 4-5 years.
Hervevax vaccine
More affordable and often used is a one-shot rubella vaccine. This is the Belgian Herveax vaccine. Reviews of it note that the developed immunity against the virus lasts at least 15 years. This drug rarely causes side effects, so it is often used to vaccinate young children. But Ervevax vaccines are effective for adolescents and adult women of reproductive age to prevent complications during pregnancy.
This vaccine can be administered on the same day as polio, measles, mumps, and multicomponent DTP. But injections are made in different places of the body.
Rudivax vaccine
Another imported drug is used to prevent rubella. This is Rudivax, a French-made vaccine. It contains a weakened rubella vaccine virus. Immunity after vaccination is developed in all vaccinated without exception for 2 weeks and can last up to 20 years. Therefore, this vaccine is considered the most effective. In addition, it very rarely causes side effects.
To do or not to vaccinate children against rubella, now the parents decide. Since the disease is not dangerous, it’s okay if the child is ill. The only danger is that complications can occur or he can infect a pregnant woman. And rubella in this condition causes severe intrauterine pathology. Therefore, it is recommended that all women who have not been vaccinated against rubella and have not been ill with it should be vaccinated before the alleged pregnancy.