This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (12)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Bacterial Infections  • Alert me on articles by topic

Stanley A. Plotkin, MD; Michael Katz, MD; José F. Cordero, MD, MPH

JAMA. 1999;281:561-562.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

During 1963 to 1964, a pandemic of rubella swept across Europe and the United States, leaving in its wake at least 20,000 affected infants in this country alone.¹ During the epidemic an expanded congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) was described, involving not only the classic triad of cataracts, cardiac abnormalities, and deafness, but also encephalitis, wasting, hepatitis, pneumonia, endocrinopathies, and other sequelae. This disaster supervened just after the first isolation of rubella virus in cell culture and stimulated efforts to develop a vaccine, which were successful by the end of the decade.

The initial strategy of vaccination of infants was only partly successful because transmission continued among adults.² An alternative strategy focusing on vaccination of schoolgirls failed to provide sufficient population immunity.³ Consequently, current policy in the United States, and in most European countries,⁴ is to vaccinate all infants . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliations: Pasteur Mérieux Connaught, Swiftwater, Pa, and Lyon, France (Dr Plotkin); the Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (Dr Plotkin); the March of Dimes, Birth Defects Foundation, White Plains, NY (Dr Katz); and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Immunization Program, Atlanta, Ga (Dr Cordero).

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

The Case for a Gender-Neutral (Universal) Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Policy in the United States: Point
Giuliano and Salmon
Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 2008;17:805-808.
FULL TEXT  

Prevention of Congenital Rubella Syndrome--What Makes Sense in 2006?
Robinson et al.
Epidemiol Rev 2006;28:81-87.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Congenital Rubella and Interstitial Pneumonitis
Franklin and Kelley
CLIN PEDIATR 2001;40:101-103.
 

A New Locus for Autosomal Dominant Cataract on Chromosome 12q13
Bateman et al.
IOVS 2000;41:2665-2670.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT