Developments in Brief : Mumps in U.S. Show Strong Rise Over 1986

There were 9,500 cases of mumps reported in the United States in the first six months of 1987, more than occurred in all of 1986 and a fourfold increase over the comparable period of last year, according to the national Centers for Disease Control.

Mumps is one of three vaccine-preventable childhood diseases that have registered increases in recent years after showing steady declines after the use of vaccines. The others are measles and whooping cough.

“We think that that’s the major single reason (or the increases)--that people who need the vaccine are not getting it,” said Dr. Steve Cochi of the CDC’s immunization division.

The agency blamed the increase on unvaccinated middle- and high-school students. It said that, with the gradual accumulation and increasing age of this pool of susceptible people, “outbreaks could be anticipated to extend beyond secondary schools into colleges and perhaps into the workplace.”

Supporting such a prediction is a recent report of 480 cases of mumps among students attending 16 universities and colleges in the states of Illinois, Wisconsin and South Dakota.

In 1986, after 15 years of nearly continuous decline in mumps cases, there was an increase in cases reported to CDC. The national incidence of 7,790 cases in that year compared to the all-time low of 2,982 cases reported in 1985 and was higher than in any of the preceding five years. In 1968, when mumps became a nationally notifiable disease, there were 152,209 reported cases.