Re: [Debconf-discuss] "Hepatitis A" vaccination recommendation was Re: Water supply at the venue
On Thu, 16 Jun 2016, shirish शिरीष wrote:
> On a slightly more serious note, I have not been able to find any
> info. about the booster shot as to how much time and space length
> there should be between the two. I did find peripheral info. about IG
There is an international protocol for this, and every country with a
national body that takes care of infectious disease control will also
have the choice of adopting their own protocol that is supposed to have
been tweaked to local conditions.
i.e: ask your doctor or local government health agency.
> (Immune globulin) which seems to be a protein that fights the
> infection. This is also supposed to be helpful, dunno.
Ig (immunoglobulin) is used to detect the existence of imunnosystem
response to a pathogen. In this case, you could do a bloodwork test for
two specific Ig types to detect how your body is handling Hepathitis A.
One type (IgG) will tell you if there is long-term response Ig (highly
correlated to "you have immune response for this" -- hopefully enough of
it to not get ill), the other (IgM) will tell you if there is short-term
response Ig (highly correlated to "your immune response system is
fighting this pathogen right now or has done so very recently").
So, basically, Ig response can tell (with some error margin) whether you
have been vaccinated or had natural contact with the pathogen in the
past (even if you never got ill), and also where you have had recent
contact with it.
This is the kind of stuff any semi-competent medicine student could
explain a lot better than I ever could. For the record, your medic
should be able to issue Ig testing requests for a large number of
diseases (warning: some of these tests are either quite expensive, or
difficult to source, and often both).
Gross guide for IgG/IgM results:
IgG IgM likely condition
reactive reactive recent infection (weeks/months)
reactive non-reactive old infection (months/years),
maybe (hopefully :p) immunized
non-reactive reactive acute infection (days, weeks)
non-reactive non-reactive no previous contact with pathogen
no immune response
not vaccinated
Apparently, there are wikipedia pages about IgM, IgG and other types of
Ig (IgA, IgE, IgD...).
IMO: will travel, get vaccinated and do it *early* because the shots
will oven cause mild infection or disconfort, and some cannot be taken
together. No excuses: if it is safe for you to take the shot, do it.
As an example, the *death toll* for Influenza A (H1N1) in Brazil for
2016 is close to *six hundred* so far. It is not advisable to come to
Brazil without proper 2016/Influenza-A+B (South Hemisphere strands)
immunization as far as I am concerned...
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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