13,310 cases of mumps were already reported in 2013 by Sentinel doctors against 3,730 for the whole of 2012. Surprisingly, for the Institute for Public Health Surveillance, there is no epidemic in sight.
“No no, we are not in an epidemic situation for mumps, we assure the Institute for Public Health Surveillance, there have only been a few recent outbreaks of cases grouped in communities of young adults, in large schools or barracks ”. The time is therefore obviously not for concern. However, as Santé magazine points out in its online edition, figures from the Sentinels network based on reports from 1,300 general practitioners across France volunteering for infectious disease surveillance are quite different. For the first 7 months of 2013, 13,310 reports were recorded, more than three times more than the total number of cases reported in 2012 and more than twice as many as in 2011.
The overestimation is possible, knowing that the general practitioners make their reports without having the confirmation of the diagnosis of mumps by biological analysis. The main clinical sign they observe, inflammation and swelling of the parotid salivary glands located under the ears, may indeed be caused by an infection other than that of the mumps virus. “But the Sentinels network is a good indicator of trends. Even if the 13,000 reported cases are not all, there is clearly a mumps problem, ”confirms Professor Jean-Paul Stahl, head of the infectious diseases department at Grenoble University Hospital.
Listen to Prof. Jean-Paul Stahl, Head of the infectious diseases department at Grenoble University Hospital: “There is a mumps problem, which is still a bit unclear, it is the extent of the problem”
Two phenomena could jointly explain this strong comeback of mumps in France. The efficacy of the vaccine received before the age of 2 is not fully maintained until adulthood. Thus, among the 7 outbreaks of grouped cases identified in the first half of 2013 among 18-25 year olds by the Institute for Health Watch in Rhône-Alpes, Champagne-Ardenne, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Ile-de-France and Aquitaine, 73% of affected young adults had been properly vaccinated during childhood. Added to this progressive loss of vaccine efficacy is the fact that the vaccination coverage of the MMR vaccine, the combined vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, is insufficient to adequately protect the population. At the end of 2012, the InVS estimated that a third of 15-year-old adolescents had not received the 2e essential dose of vaccine. France has also experienced, for this reason, a strong measles epidemic in 2011. The same causes have the same effects, confirms Professor Daniel Floret, chairman of the Technical Committee on Vaccinations within the High Council for Public Health: ” Since the vaccine combines measles and mumps, it is not inconsistent that the difficulties we have experienced with measles are repeated with mumps ”. But while the health authorities have communicated a lot about the measles epidemic, not a word for the moment on this upsurge in mumps.
.
