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To the Editor: Italian military recruits have received mandatory mumps vaccination by Urabe Am9 strain since 1998. A previous study¹ found that, in 1999, 37 episodes of mumps-like disease were found in recipients of the vaccine, and that 35 of these occurred within 1 month of immunization. To assess whether these cases were due to some expected residual virulence of the live attenuated Urabe Am9 mumps strain, we analyzed saliva samples from recruits who developed mumps-like disease within 1 month of vaccination.

Methods

After informed consent, saliva samples were collected from 20 military recruits who had developed mumps-like disease and from 14 randomly selected asymptomatic recruits 1 month following vaccination. For positive amplification control a commercial Jeryl Linn vaccine strain was used (M-M-R-II, Aventis Pasteur MSD, Lyon, France). Viral RNA was extracted according to the manufacturer's instructions (Machery-Nagel, Duren, Germany), retrotranscribed with avian myeloblastosis virus enzyme (Roche, Basel, Switzerland) and amplified . . . [Full Text of this Article]