BACKGROUND Emergency physicians see many people who present to the emergency department stating that they are immunized against tetanus, when in fact, they are not. The patient history is not dependable for determining true tetanus status and simple patient surveys do not provide actual prevalence. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of tetanus status by antibody titer s...

Suppurative otitis media is a common childhood infection that predisposes to otogenic tetanus. Tetanus is a vaccine preventable disease that is associated with high cost of care and mortality. This study highlights reasons for otogenic tetanus in Nigerian children and way of reducing the menace. This is a 5-year retrospective review of all patients managed for otogenic tetanus in at the Departm...

1. The sera of twenty-six individuals who carried tetanus bacilli in their digestive tracts all contained appreciable amounts of antitoxin. 2. The sera of thirty individuals in whose stools no tetanus-like organisms were found were, with two exceptions, free from tetanus antitoxin. 3. Although we have been unable to measure accurately the antitoxin content of these human carriers of tetanus bac...

The capacity of tetanus toxin to enhance motor neuron excitability has suggested its potential use as a therapeutic. Widespread active vaccination against tetanus in all developed countries is considered the major obstacle to clinical use of the toxin. We wished to determine the response to localized intramuscular injection of tetanus toxin in both passively and actively immunized animals as an...

Tetanus toxoid elicits protective antibodies against tetanus toxin in humans and animals. It has been reported that antitoxin from immunized humans contains no anti-light chain antibodies, based on immunodiffusion and quantitative precipitin analyses. We confirmed the absence of precipitating anti-light chain antibodies in tetanus immune globulin. However, the presence of antibodies against the...

Tetanus can be only prevented by vaccination because immunity against this disease is rarely acquired, even by natural infections. To maintain long-term protective immunity against tetanus, booster immunization is essential for adolescents and adults. Most hospitalized cases and virtually all deaths occur in people over 60 years of age. The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree of...

BACKGROUND Serosurveys that measure tetanus antitoxin can complement immunization coverage surveys to allow evaluation of immunization services in developing countries. Measurement of IgG tetanus antitoxin in oral fluid was investigated as a practical and noninvasive alternative to and correlate of serum antibodies. METHODS Serum and oral fluid were collected from Malian infants, toddlers and...

PROBLEM/CONDITION Tetanus is a severe and often fatal infection. The incidence of reported cases in the United States has declined steadily since introduction of tetanus toxoid vaccines in the 1940s. REPORTING PERIOD This report covers surveillance data for 1998--2000. DESCRIPTION OF SYSTEM Physician-diagnosed cases of tetanus were reported to CDC's National Notifiable Disease Surveillance ...

BACKGROUND Tetanus is still a major health problem in developing countries and it is associated with a high morbidity and mortality rate. There is paucity of published data regarding the management of tetanus in Tanzania, especially the study area. This study was conducted to describe our own experiences with tetanus outlining the clinical characteristics and treatment outcome of tetanus patien...