MMR

[Mog]

I know this has been covered before but it was before my time on mumsnet. At the risk of boring people, yes or no to the MMR jab?

I agree Janeyp - I'd love to know the facts around the real need for a booster.

JaneyP, I don't know if a pre-school booster is essential or not, but mine never had them. My reasoning was that when my DD1 was born, in New York, in 1982, where MMR was already the norm, there wasn't a pre-school booster.

Possibly they had a different version of the vaccine there, but if she wouldn't have had it there (we moved back here when she was 15 months, right after she had the MMR), then she didn't need it here, and I have followed that through with my other 3 children - they all had the basic MMR at c. 15 months but I refused to let any of them have the pre-school booster or any subsequent boosters - I think there should be a limit to the amount of alien antibodies they are exposed to.

My GP is renowned for disapproving of the pre-school MMR booster. My DS hasn't had MMR anyway, without wanting to enter an argument but roughly for the reasons Droile cites, but is too young for the booster yet. So sorry I can't tell you exactly why she's not in favour of it.

Message withdrawn

JaneyP, I've just been doing some research into this as I had read that after the 1st dose of MMR 80% of children had immunity to the diseases. I took this to mean that the blood test could tell us that my son was immune to say Measles, but not Rubella. I have recently spoken to another GP who told me that all the blood test can do is detect immunity, not how immune they are, so the blood test could say that they are immune to measles, but in fact they are only 2% immune - if that makes any sense. I've decided to go the single jab route for the booster (if we'd done that in the first place there would be no need for a booster, as the single jabs are a once only thing), also, my son had Mumps a couple of months ago so we're just going to have the measles and rubella jabs done separately.

Paula1, what you say about children who have had the single jabs not needing the booster is very interesting. Could you tell me where you got that info from? Ds had his jabs singly and I'd be very happy to avoid an unnecessary blood test or immunisations! Thanks.

Marina, the bit about not needing a booster was from a leaflet sent to me by Direct Health 2000. The bit about the blood test not being terribly reliable was from a GP.

sb34 - I think that the blood test is available on the NHS and this was a personal opinion from the doctor concerned.
Having said that, my dh is a GP and he says he hates doing blood tests on small children - they have little veins and it is VERY difficult to get enough blood (it hurts, therefore wriggling screaming child the norm) to test immunity. A peadiatrician is doing it all the time but a GP will maybe have to take blood from a kid once a month, which doesn't keep skills up enough to be confident. Sounds like this doc was scared of doing it.

Marina -I was told by the clinic where my dd was administered her single jabs that she would not need a pre-school booster - she is now covered for life

sorry - meant to address my response to Paula1

Tee hee Paula1, that will teach me not to read the literature from the very clinic where ds was done, properly! Thanks for that - it will save me ringing them next year, which is what I was planning to do.