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New research shows the virus can have devastating effects on the immune system that persist much longer than the illness itself. Measles is far more dangerous than most people realize, new research shows. The disease itself can cause a severe and sometimes deadly illness, but two new studies published on Thursday found that even when patients recover, the virus can inflict lasting harm on their immune systems. The weakened immunity leaves a child vulnerable for several years to other dangerous infections like flu and pneumonia. The damage occurs because the virus kills cells that make antibodies, which are crucial to fighting off infections.
Scientists call the effect “immune amnesia.” During childhood, as colds, flu, stomach bugs and other illnesses come and go, the immune system forms something akin to a memory that it uses to attack those germs if they try to invade again. The measles virus erases that memory, leaving the patient prone to catching the diseases all over again. The findings make the need for measles vaccination even more urgent, because it protects children against much more than measles, the researchers said.
“When parents say no to getting a measles vaccine, you’re not just taking a risk of your kid getting measles, you’re causing them to lose this amazing resource of defenses they’ve built up over the years before measles, and that puts them at risk of catching other infections,” said Dr. Michael J. Mina of the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the lead author of one of the new studies, published in the journal Science. “You’ve got to watch your kid’s back for a few more years.” In fact if a person who has received vaccinations for other diseases contracts measles, it may wipe out the protection those vaccines had provided. Revaccination could help restore the child’s immunity, the researchers said.
The second study, by a different team, was published in Science Immunology. “This is wonderful science,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the research. “These are two wonderfully complementary studies that have provided a basic immunologic understanding of a phenomenon that has been recognized for a long time, mainly that measles infection causes immune suppression.” The studies arrive at a time of heightened concern about measles, as outbreaks flare up in the United States and other developed countries where vaccines had largely eradicated the disease, but where a growing number of parents have begun to refuse vaccination. Some claim religious reasons, and some mistakenly fear a link to autism, based on research that has been discredited as fraudulent.
Globally, the measles vaccine is estimated to have saved 21 million lives between 2000 and 2017. But there are still more than 7 million cases and 100,000 deaths a year, many in developing countries where people lack access to the vaccine. Most who die are children younger than five years. Vaccination involves two injections, usually given when children are one year old and then four years old. The same shots (commonly referred to as MMR) include vaccines against mumps and rubella, and a newer version also protects against chickenpox.
Findings reported in two studies published on November 1, 2019:
