2014 was a bad year for mumps, a nearly forgotten virus

A nearly forgotten virus has made a comeback.

Mumps sickened nearly 1,100 Americans this year, causing outbreaks among college students and professional hockey players.

Nearly twice as many Americans have developed mumps this year as in all of 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fourteen players in the National Hockey League have been infected with mumps since October. A spring outbreak at Ohio State University and the surrounding community, now over, sickened 484 people. A late winter outbreak at Fordham University in New York affected more than a dozen.

Though mumps was once a disease of childhood, today's cases are often in teens and young adults.

Most people born before 1967, when the mumps vaccine was introduced, have already had the illness, making them immune. Most children are vaccinated, says Paul Offit, chief of infectious disease at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Two doses of the mumps vaccine, given around ages 1 and 4, prevent about 88% of cases.

Teens and young adults are more vulnerable because the mumps vaccine's protection fades after a decade or two, says William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Before a vaccine was available, the virus sickened 186,000 Americans a year, according to the CDC. Though the vaccine reduced mumps cases by 99%, the disease never completely went away in the USA, says Gregory Wallace, who heads the CDC's measles, mumps, rubella and polio team.

The virus can be introduced when people travel to areas with lower vaccination rates or visit with people from those parts of the world, Schaffner says.

"Almost half the world doesn't use the mumps vaccine, so there is still plenty of mumps out there," Wallace says.

Mumps is mainly spread through "sustained, close contact" with infected people as droplets of saliva or mucus spray through the air during coughing, sneezing or even talking, Schaffner says.

College dormitories are ideal places to spread mumps, because students live, eat and socialize together, he says. Members of a sports team similarly eat, share locker rooms and travel together for days.

The mumps virus can cause fever, headache, fatigue, muscle aches, loss of appetite and a tell-tale "chipmunk" swelling around the face and throat. In severe cases, the virus can cause deafness, painful inflammation of the testicles and encephalitis, an inflammation of the lining of the brain.

Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby, the latest NHL player to come down with the mumps, had gotten a mumps booster shot before traveling to the Olympics in Russia in February.

Vaccination is the best way to prevent the illness or reduce its severity, says Jose Rodriguez, a spokesman for Columbus Public Health in Ohio. "It's not perfect, but it's the best thing we have," Rodriguez says.

Vaccinated people who get mumps tend to develop milder cases than those who get sick after never being vaccinated, Schaffner says.

Hockey player Francois Beauchemin, who plays for the Anaheim Ducks, says, "Mumps has to be the worst thing I've ever had in my life."

Contributing: Kevin Allen