Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/AlG6nsoVV5Y   If you completed your childhood tetanus shot series, the old DPT and the more recent DTap, you are protected for life against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis or whooping cough.  Infectious disease researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University just published their analysis of World Health Organization data comparing illness in countries that do or do not recommend adult booster vaccinations.   The crunched numbers covering more than 11 billion person-years failed to show any reduction in tetanus or diphtheria in those populations that received vaccine boosters every 5 to 20 years.  It appears that childhood vaccinations, if completed, stimulate sufficient immune memory for a lifetime of protection.    Ariel M Slifka, Byung Park, Lina Gao, Mark K Slifka, Incidence of Tetanus and Diphtheria in Relation to Adult Vaccination Schedules, Clinical Infectious Diseases, , ciaa017, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa017   #tetanus #diphtheria #dpt #dtap #boosters