Two new studies show that measles can weaken a person's immune system for years, inducing "immune amnesia" that wipes the immune system's memory of how to fight off other maladies the body has already conquered. The highly contagious measles virus still kills more than 100,000 people annually, but before a vaccine was introduced in 1963, 2.6 million people died from the disease each year. The deployment of the measles vaccine didn't just slash the measles fatality rate, though; it also drastically reduced the rate of other infectious diseases, National Geographic reports.
"We actually saw the whole overall baseline for childhood mortality drop precipitously," says Harvard's Michael Mina, a lead author of one of the new studies, published in Science. That study, and another one published in Science Immunology, explore how the measles virus kills off an alarming amount of antibodies. The findings underscore the importance of immunizing children, the authors of both studies emphasize. A number of measles outbreaks have occurred in the U.S. in the past few years, starting in communities where parents decline to vaccinate their children.
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