Vaccines might provide ear infection relief

Ear infections are a painful rite of passage - both for crying children and their sleep-deprived parents.

With about 13 million annual cases in children under 5, ear infections are the leading reason for prescribing antibiotics, according to an article in Pediatrics in May. The ailments are more common in the first few years of life because the eustachian tubes in a young child's middle ears are short, floppy and prone to collecting fluid that can foster bacteria.

Some children suffer more than others.

Jackson Wiley, 4, and his brother, Langston, 6, had so many ear infections that the fluid in their ears actually muffled sounds from the outside world. Because they couldn't hear well, both boys had trouble learning to talk, says their mother, Denise Gordon of Brooklyn, N.Y.

"They weren't following directions, and we weren't sure if they couldn't understand or if they couldn't hear," says Gordon, who takes both children to speech therapy.

When the child were 2, their doctor recommended surgery to implant ear tubes.

The procedure aims to ventilate the middle ear and allow fluid to drain rather than build up and get infected, says the boys' doctor, Richard Rosenfeld, professor and chairman of otolaryngology at Long Island College Hospital. More than 300,000 kids have the procedures each year, according to Pediatrics.

Both children needed a repeat procedure to install a second set of tubes in each ear, Gordon says. Because the tubes tend to fall out after 12 to 18 months, about one in three children need repeat procedures, Rosenfeld says. Although the boys can now hear and speak well, Langston is still prone to painful ear infections, Gordon says.

Though researchers don't yet have a way to stop this suffering, they are working on at least three experimental vaccines with the potential to prevent ear infections.

Developing vaccines for ear infections is tricky because more than 100 types of germs cause such infections, Rosenfeld says.

Because children develop ear infections so often, and because parents miss so much work because of them, certain vaccines against ear infections could actually be cost-effective, even if they cost $65 to $125 each, says Tracy Lieu of Children's Hospital Boston, co-author of the Pediatrics paper.

Three candidate vaccines might offer relief:

Prevnar 13