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The Measles Virus Makes You Sick, Then It Causes ‘Immune Amnesia’
Yet another reason to get your kids vaccinated
When the measles vaccine first became available in the 1960s, something curious happened: Scientists began to notice a drastic drop in the number of children dying from other infectious diseases as well.
Measles is a dangerous virus, and before the introduction of the vaccine, it infected 3 to 4 million children, killing between 400 and 500 annually in the United States. The vaccine’s emergence cut measles cases by 80% between 2000 and 2017 and is credited with saving 21.1 million lives. When researchers looked closely at the numbers, it appeared that deaths from total infectious disease had dropped by as much as 50%. How could a single vaccine be protecting children from all these other pathogens?
Initially, the theory was that the vaccine was somehow bolstering the immune system. But in the past two decades, a new, reverse explanation has begun to emerge: What if measles infections were damaging the immune system? What if contracting the virus was erasing children’s immunological memories and making them more likely to die from other diseases?
This concept, which scientists have been calling “immune amnesia,” has been growing in popularity lately — especially since a landmark…
