Relationship between biochemical markers and measles viral load in patients with immunologically naive cases and secondary vaccine failure: LDH is one of the potential auxiliary indicators for secondary vaccine failure.

Abstract

This study investigated the correlation between biochemical markers and viral load among 38 measles cases, including 15 immunologically naive patients and 23 patients with secondary vaccine failure (SVF). We examined four biochemical markers, namely, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, C-reactive protein, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and their relationship between virus genome copy numbers in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and throat swabs as well as the concentration of measles-specific IgG. Although viral genome copies in both clinical specimens showed a significant correlation with specific IgG concentration, they had a higher correlation in PBMCs (Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient, -0.662; p < .0001) than in throat swabs (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, -0.443; p = .0078). The viral load in PBMCs also significantly correlated with LDH values (correlation coefficient, 0.360; p = .036). Thus, the serum LDH level might be a potential auxiliary indicator to distinguish immunologically naive patients with measles from those with SVF.