The measles virus is causing a significant portion of the immune system’s antibodies to be destroyed, making people more susceptible to a range of diseases and erasing the immune protection of previous vaccinations. This is particularly essential for children to be vaccinated against measles. According to a statistic from the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 100,000 people die from measles each year. Despite effective vaccinations, the highly contagious virus is on the rise in Europe. In 2009, only 7,884 measles infections were reported in Europe, while in 2018, the number of infections rose to 82,596. The highest percentage of infections was in Ukraine, where 1,200 people per million inhabitants were infected with measles within a year.
Aside from the deaths directly caused by measles, medicine has long observed that measles patients often suffer from other diseases after their recovery, including diseases against which they were previously vaccinated. Therefore, scientists have suspected that a measles infection weakens the human immune system in the long term. Researchers from the Harvard Medical School (HMS) in Boston and the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge have now investigated why measles has such a significant impact on the immune system even after recovery. The results of the study, which analyzed blood samples from 77 Dutch schoolchildren, were published in the journals Science and Science Immunology.
The researchers used the VirScan test to examine the blood samples for antibodies against various viruses and bacteria. It was found that the number of antibodies in children decreased significantly after a measles infection. Depending on the defense molecule, between eleven and seventy-three percent of the antibodies were lost due to measles. As a result, the body cannot defend itself against pathogens that it would otherwise be protected against. Animal experiments with macaques showed that the weakening of the immune system is still present at least five months after a measles infection.
