Hepatitis A Epidemic Linked to Child Care Facilities.(Brief Article)

2001 DEC 5 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- by Sonia Nichols, senior medical writer - U.S. government officials have concluded a hepatitis A outbreak that occurred in Arizona was linked to child care facilities.

After studying an outbreak of hepatitis A virus among the population of Maricopa, Arizona, in 1997, epidemiologists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said having contact with adults or children associated with child care centers was the single factor associated with new cases of hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection during that epidemic. Although HAV vaccine is not routinely recommended for children, the case highlights the importance of devising vaccine strategies to cover children in communities where HAV infection rates rise, they say.

More than 1200 people were reportedly infected during the Arizona outbreak. According to L.V. Venczel and CDC associates, the highest rates of infections were detected in youngsters between 0 and 4 years old, in older children between 5 and 14 years old, and in adolescents and young adults between 15 and 29 years old.

Of all known associated risk factors, contact with a patient already infected with HAV accounted for almost half of the outbreak cases, investigators said. Furthermore, a majority of those patients were people who were associated with child care centers.

The CDC group also performed a case-control study of 116 outbreak patients and 116 matched, uninfected control subjects. They believe a third of the case-control patients might have become infected via direct or indirect contact with child care centers.

"In age-stratified analyses, the association between hepatitis A and direct or indirect contact with a child care setting was strongest for children

Having children younger than five years old in the household, however, did not associate with the risk for hepatitis A.