Measles Vaccination Associated With Lower Mortality Risk From Other Childhood Infections

Abstract

According to the researchers, when measles was common it contributed to more than half of all childhood deaths from infectious diseases in the industrialized countries. In developing countries, where infectious diseases are very high, the researchers concluded that the reduction in mortality has been up to 80 percent. IT HAS BEEN known for decades that having measles suppresses children's immune system for weeks and months, leaving them unable to fight off infections from pneumonia, encephalitis, bronchitis, diarrheal diseases and other opportunistic infections. A new study suggests that the measles virus may result in a longer-lasting “immune-amnesia” that makes it harder for children to fight off other diseases for 2 to 3 years (Mina et al., 2015). According to the researchers, these results provide additional evidence of the public health benefits of the measles vaccine. The researchers examined data on post-measles infections in the United States, England and Wales, and Denmark both before and after the measles vaccine became available in the 1960s. They conducted a detailed analysis of population data investigating death rates and measles incidence among children aged 1–9 in the European countries and among children aged 1–14 in the U.S. during the preand post-vaccine eras. Measles vaccination started in the 1960s in the United Kingdom and the United States and in the 1980s in Denmark. The researchers found a correlation between the number of measles cases in a given period and the number of deaths from non-measles infectious diseases in children in the 2 or 3 years after the measles vaccine was introduced. In each of these locations, there was a drop in the non-measles mortality rate that paralleled the introduction of the measles vaccine and the subsequent decrease in the rate of measles infection. According to the researchers it appears that when measles was prevalent, it would go through a population, and that population would be at an increased risk