Level of anti tetanus antibodies in children aged two to nine years in Damietta governorate, Egypt

Abstract EN

Objective : Tetanus is an acute often fatal disease by extremely potent neurotoxin of clostridium Tetani, characterized by spasm and increased muscle tone.

The disease is an important public health problem in developing countries.

The immunization against tetanus is highly protective, providing long lasting immunity and recommended for whole population.

The protection against tetanus is incomplete after single dose as the peak antibody level achieved with the first dose is usually low, subsequent doses are required to prime the immune system and produce higher antibody level.

Aim of the Work: to evaluate the immune status against tetanus in children aged between 2 and 9 years and to clarify the importance of boostering tetanus vaccine at this age.

Methods: a cross sectional study was conducted including 180 normal healthy children aged 2 to 9 years of both sexes.

They were divided into two main groups, according to the number of doses of vaccine.

Results : Comparison between group A and group B as regard immunity.

In group A, only 5% of cases had minimum protection, 15.8%were fully protected, 23.3% were unprotected and more than half (55.8%) of cases had long protection.

In group B only 8.3% of cases had minimum protection, 10.0% of cases were unprotected, 21.7% were fully protected and the majority (60%) of cases had long protection.

Conclusion: The study proved that; regardless, the 4-dose schedule or 5-dose schedule, still there was some cases with levels of antibodies less than 0.01 IU/ml, indicating that they are unprotected.

In addition, there was no statistical significance difference between group A and group B as regard level of protection when considering the number of doses; while there was statistically significant difference between children in group A when considering the age of the patient; i.e., increased age is associated with decreased protection.

These results reflects the need for early use of 4-schedule doses, the 5-dose regimens provide better protection than 4-dose regimen regardless the advancement of the age of the child.