Texas reports new measles outbreak in West Texas
feeds.texastribune.org
The outbreak in Gaines County, with a population of about 22,000, has grown since two cases were reported in January. All those who contracted measles were unvaccinated, health officials said.

At least 10 cases of measles — eight of which are among school-aged children — have been reported in Gaines County in West Texas over the past two weeks, driving worries of an escalating outbreak.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/measles-does-long-term-damage-immune-system-studies-show

    Measles does long-term damage to immune system, studies show

    Clinicians and epidemiologists have long known that measles infection increases childhood morbidity and mortality for as long as 5 years after illness, and measles in the pre-vaccination era was likely associated with at least half of all childhood deaths from infectious diseases.

    The study subjects came from an Orthodox Protestant community in Holland, where parents largely reject vaccination on religious grounds. Plasma samples were collected from 77 unvaccinated children who contracted measles during an outbreak. Of the 77 children, 34 were reported to have mild measles and 43 to have severe cases.

    The researchers compared the plasma of subjects and paired controls using VirScan, a tool that scans a person’s antibodies from a small blood sample, allowing the researchers to catalogue the children’s history of viral infections and immunity. Mina said this study was VirScan’s debut, and showed that the immune systems of the unvaccinated Dutch children who acquired measles during an outbreak were severely impaired following infections.

    “In a normal, healthy vaccinated person, we can expected a 5% to 10% drop in antibodies over time,” Mina told CIDRAP News.

    After severe measles, children lost a median of 40% (range, 11% to 62%), and after mild measles they lost 33% (range, 12% to 73%), of their total preexisting pathogen-specific antibody repertoires. Paired, healthy controls retained approximately 90% of their repertoires over similar or longer durations.

    I kind of suspect that if someone doesn’t get their kids a measles vaccination, they probably also aren’t getting them vaccinations for other things, too.