Mumps Outbreak Hits Orthodox Kids
A mumps outbreak in New York and New Jersey in which 97 percent of the more than 3,500 cases were Orthodox Jews and most male was a result of the way the boys are schooled, according to a new study.
A study on the June 2009 to June 2010 outbreak in New York City, two upstate New York counties and one New Jersey county home to a high percentage of Orthodox Jews appears in the Nov. 1 2012 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Adolescents 13 years to 17 years of age, representing 27 percent of all the patients, and males, representing 78 percent of patients in that age group, were disproportionately affected, according to the study abstract. Most of the boys had been vaccinated against the disease.
Most of the boys that contracted the disease studied in Jewish yeshiva high schools, “where students spend many hours daily in intense, face-to-face interaction,” according to the study abstract, leading to the mumps’ spread.
The study concluded that “intense exposures, particularly among boys in schools, facilitated transmission and overcame vaccine-induced protection in these patients.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
