Divine Angel said:
(Leaving this here so I can find it later.)
The school just emailed to say there have been confirmed cases of hand, foot & mouth within the school, watch out for symptoms, keep kids at home if they’re symptomatic etc.
The attached factsheet mentions “rare” cases of complications eg meningitis. My quick Google didn’t bring up a % of cases although I found a Korean study in which 54% of those studied developed complications. (I’ve only skimmed the article, about to do school pickup.)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3546090/#idm139880158417392title
Take chickenpox, which now has a vaccine, and it’s 1% of cases developing complications (shingles is not considered a complication).
Maybe chickenpox is easier to develop a vaccine for, maybe it’s better to prevent both chickenpox and shingles. Aside from $$, what could be preventing a vaccine for HFMD?
OK, let’s see what the linked technical article says.
> In 2009, the first outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) caused by enterovirus 71 occurred in the Republic of Korea.
> One hundred sixty-eight patients were examined for this investigation. Eighty patients were without complications while 88 were accompanied by complications, and 2 had expired.
Hold on, did they deliberately sdelect patients with complications, rather than select HFMD cases at random?
> Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a common acute viral illness with fever, oral ulcers, and vesicular rashes on the hands, feet and buttock as characteristics features. HFMD occurs most frequently by coxsackievirus A16, and is caused by various enteroviruses including enterovirus 71. Herpangina (HP) has characteristics of having fever and oral ulcers without skin rash, and is developed by various enteroviruses likewise HFMD. HFMD or HP is generally known as a self-limiting disease that shows a mild clinical course. However, enterovirus 71-induced HFMD or HP may often show a severe clinical course, accompanied by neurologic complications, and may lead to death.
A bit confusing. Are they saying that enterovirus 71 is rarely the cause of HFMD? With the most common cause being coxsackievirus A16. Yes, that seems to be the case.
> Two study results were already reported on the ROK’s epidemic in 2009. Nevertheless, these studies utilized merely the data entered into the Nationwide Enterovirus Sentinel Surveillance System and did not include detailed medical records review on each case. Thus, this study sought risk factors associated with complications after examined the clinical features and laboratory findings though the medical records of patients admitted to the hospital with HFMD or HP confirmed for etiologic viruses, which were endemic in the ROK in 2009.
OK, as expected. Cases of HFMD that did not make it to hospital are excluded from the study. Compare chickenpox, most cases of chickenpox do not make it to hospital, and so the percentage of chickenpox cases that did make it to hospital would have a much higher than 1% rate of complications.
> Aside from $$, what could be preventing a vaccine for HFMD?
The legal principles of “guilty until proved innocent” and “no release on bail” applied to vaccines are guiltiy of killing millions of people.
Add that to the research principle of no more than 10 people working directly on each vaccine.
