Vaccinations protect children against varied infectious diseases during different stages of growth. Health practitioners advise parents to follow the recommended vaccine schedule that starts two months after a baby is born and continues until the child completes six years of age.
However, according to a new study, a significant number of American parents are often skipping or delaying their children's vaccination. In the researchers' view, this trend can prove to be risky and put children at higher risks of many deadly diseases.
For the study, study leader Jason Glanz and colleagues collected data from eight care organizations that included details of about 323,000 children and their immunization schedule.
Researchers noticed a dramatic increase in the rate of children who received vaccines for diseases like measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), tetanus and pertussis late, during 2004 and 2008 (from 42 percent to 54 percent).
"What we're worried about is if (undervaccination) becomes more and more common, is it possible this places children at an increased risk of vaccine-preventable diseases?" study leader Jason Glanz, with Kaiser Permanente Colorado in Denver, told Reuters Health. "It's possible that some of these diseases that we worked so hard to eliminate (could) come back."
Researchers also found many parents, concerned with the large number of vaccines in the recommended list, hesitating to vaccinate their kids. About one in eight children were found undervaccinated as a result of parental concern.
"This large multisite cohort study suggests that undervaccination is an increasing trend," Medpage Today quoted the authors as writing. "Our results also suggest that specific patterns of undervaccination have been occurring with greater frequency over time. In addition, our cohort analyses comparing undervaccinated and age-appropriately vaccinated children demonstrated differences in healthcare utilization, which appear to increase as the magnitude of undervaccination increases."
Results of the study have been published Jan. 21 in the journal of JAMA Pediatrics.
