A 40-year-old man presented with a nonhealing wound on the left ankle for the last 5 weeks, a tingling sensation in both hands for 20 days, and weakness in all four limbs for 10 days. He had been bitten by a snake while working in a sugarcane field 6 weeks earlier and had received tetanus toxoid and anti-snake venom on the day of the bite. He had clinical, biochemical, and electrophysiological ...

Tetanus is now so rare in the United States that few physicians encounter a case in the course of their careers. The 96% reduction in the incidence of reported tetanus cases and elimination of neonatal tetanus since the late 1940s can be attributed to the effectiveness of widespread vaccination with tetanus toxoid–containing vaccines, as well as improved wound care and delivery practices.1 Desp...

BACKGROUND There is inequality in vaccination coverage, and adult farmers in tropical rural communities could have missed tetanus toxoid as campaigns target children. Snakebite is not uncommon and partly because of lack of effective antivenom, management in inaccessible areas could be complicated with tetanus in unimmunized victims. PATIENTS AND RESULTS Four snakebite victims who developed te...

BACKGROUND Although 93% of 12- to 23-month-old children in India receive at least one vaccine, typically Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, only 75% complete the recommended three doses of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT, also referred to as DTP) vaccine. Determinants can be different for nonvaccination and dropout but have not been examined in earlier studies. We use the three-dose DPT series as a pr...

The IAP Committee on Immunization (COI) recommends offering Tdap vaccine instead of Td/ TT vaccine in all children / adolescents who can afford to use the vaccine(1). Tdap is a costly vaccine, which many parents may not be able to afford. There is a need for a less expensive vaccine, though slightly more reactogenic because of whole cell pertussis antigen in reduced quantity, with full dose of ...

After concern about the safety of diphtheria-tetanus toxoid-whole cell pertussis vaccines (DTPw), the recommendation to vaccinate children with DTPw was withdrawn in 1974 in the former West Germany. This led pertussis cases to increase to an estimated 100,000 annually. Despite renewal of the vaccination recommendation in 1991, vaccine use remained low. The German health care structure assures r...

Infection with human T lymphotropic virus type II (HTLV-II) has been linked to an increased incidence of bacterial pneumonia. To determine whether HTLV-II infection is associated with impaired humoral immune responses, we immunized a cohort of HTLV-II-infected subjects and matched uninfected control subjects with 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide and tetanus toxoid vaccines. The pneumococca...

The chronic drainage of lymph and cells from a thoracic duct fistula in rats results in a reduction in the weight of all the lymph nodes and of their content of small lymphocytes. The primary immune response to tetanus toxoid or sheep erythrocytes is severely depressed or abolished in such animals. This unresponsive state is related to the loss of lymphocytes from the thoracic duct fistula and,...

DPT, a combination vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis is available since many years and still continued in the national immunisation schedule of many countries. Although highly potent, reactions to DPT vaccine are well known, mainly attributed to the factors like Pertussis component, aluminum adjuvant and lower purity of tetanus and diphtheria toxoids. The latter most important a...