DUBLIN, Ireland, April 2 (UPI) -- Urologists at a hospital in Ireland report an increase in mumps-related testicle problems among teenage boys and young men.

Niall Davis teamed up with colleagues at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin and reviewed five decades' worth of research and statistics, and found in some parts of the United Kingdom, MMR vaccine usage fell from 91 percent to 58 percent about 15 years ago because of a global shortage of the vaccine and concerns that the vaccine may have a link to autism. Despite studies finding no MMR vaccine link to autism, some parents have not been vaccinating their children for measles, mumps and rubella, Davis said.


"Boys who did not receive the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine during the mid 1990s are now collecting in large numbers in secondary schools and colleges and this provides a perfect breeding ground for the virus," Davis said in a statement. "It is those unvaccinated boys that we are now seeing in our urology department. It's estimated that as many of 42 percent of patients with mumps experience at least one complication such as swollen testicles, aseptic meningitis, acute inflammation of the brain, deafness and pancreatitis. The recent resurgence in the disease means that a significant proportion of 15- to 24-year-olds living in heavily populated environments are affected."

The findings are published in the British Journal of Urology.