Seroprevalence study of anti diphtheria antibodies in two age-groups of Romanian adults.

Seroprevalence study of anti diphtheria antibodies in two age-groups of Romanian adults. Roum Arch Microbiol Immunol. 2014 Jan-Jun;73(1-2):18-24 Authors: Dragomirescu CC, Coldea IL, Ilie A, Stănescu A, Ungureanu V, Popa MI Abstract BACKGROUND: Diphtheria represents a serious infectious disease with high epidemic potential. It is a vaccine preventable disease (a minimum vaccine coverage of 95% for children of 1 year and 90% in adults could prevent the disease). Diphtheria vaccination is included in the National Immunization Program (NIP). Complete vaccination for children consists in DTaP (diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid and acellular pertussis vaccine) vaccine administration from the age of 2 months until 4 years and dT vaccine (tetanus toxoid and a reduced dose of diphtheria toxoid) at 14 years old. The aim of this paper was to highlight the protection against diphtheria of an age segment of the Romanian adult population (20 to 39 years old) using a seroprevalence study. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The Romanian subjects were selected from two age groups: 20-29 years (n = 219) and 30-39 years (n = 229), representative for all counties of Romania. The commercial kit Anti-Diphtheria Toxoid ELISA (IgG) (EUROIMMUN) was used to detect the antibodies of IgG class against diphtheria toxoid in the sera obtained from our subjects. RESULTS: We detected a 56.6% rate of positive sera (> 0.1 IU/ml--protection level) for the 20-29...
Source: Roumanian Archives of Microbiology and Immunology - Category: Microbiology Tags: Roum Arch Microbiol Immunol Source Type: research