Why Does Measles Reset Your Immune System?

add to that any number of complications. About ten percent of measles patients get severe diarrhea and ear infections. More dire complications include pneumonia and encephalitis, which is brain swelling that can further cause convulsions, deafness, cognitive impairment, and even death.

Contracting the disease while pregnant can cause premature birth, a low birth weight for the baby, and even miscarriage, and some people develop a rare and fatal central nervous system disease called subacute sclerosing pen encephalitis about seven to ten years after they've had measles. Today, however, many people don't know much about this terrible disease, which once struck three to four million people annually in the U s Alone

and killed four hundred to five hundred per year. That's because in nineteen sixty three, a highly effective vaccine debut and measles infections plummeted. Then in nineteen seventy eight, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began working to totally eliminate this infectious disease from the United States through widespread use of the measles vaccine. It worked. By the year

two thousand, measles was declared eliminated from the nation. During the decades when measles was steadily on the decline, memories of the disease and it's many dangers also disappeared. Unfortunately, measles began showing its ugly red face again in the late two thousands and twenty teens, and as of twenty nineteen, it's raging in many parts of the United States, including

New York State and Washington State. While many of these outbreaks occurred because of people with the infection coming into the US, one large outbreak in teen that sickened three d eighty three people was largely due to an unvaccinated group of Amish people. Another outbreak started at Disneyland in California in possibly due to someone contracting measles. Overseas, forty

seven people became sick. The return of measles is concerning enough, but in a study showed people who came down with measles were at risk for getting a raft of other diseases. Their immune systems have developed a sort of amnesia. When measles attacks your body, it goes to war with your white blood cells. Specifically, it binds to your B and T cells then wipes them out. B and T cells

are highly specialized cells critical to your health. They're the ones that recognize infectious germs in your body, then quickly multiplied to fight off these unwelcome invaders. A subset of your B and T cells also remembers each infection you contract. If that kind of bacteria or virus strikes again, they recognize it and prompt your immune system to spring into action so fast that you probably won't get sick. That's immunity.

But because measles trashes your white blood cells, it places you at high risk of coming to other infections, and not just for a few weeks after you get it. After mass measles vaccinations of heard in the nineteen sixties, childhood deaths from measles plunged, as expected, but so did childhood deaths from a host of other infectious diseases. In resource poor countries, the drop in childhood death rates post measles vaccination was as much as thirty in some of

the poorest nations. It was a whopping in Researchers began to figure out why this is a study with Rees's monkeys showed that while the monkeys immune systems began producing new B and T cells a month after contracting the measles, these new cells only remembered that the monkeys had had measles in the past. They didn't recall any of the other infections the monkeys it had. Basically, the monkeys immune

systems had amnesia. This meant the primates would have to go through all sorts of illnesses again to regain the immunity levels they'd built up since birth, and it appears that the same is true for humans. Results of a study were published in the journal Science that showed children who got the measles and survived were more likely to subsequently die from another infectious disease than kids who never

got the measles. In the four countries studied Denmark, England, Wales, and the United States, the children's immune systems all appeared to be weakened for two to three years post measles. Although the measles vaccine is highly effective, measles remains one of the leading causes of death among young children Globally. Nearly a hundred and ten thousand people died from measles around the world in twenties seventeen, mostly children under the

age of five. On a more positive note, because increasing numbers of kids are receiving the measles vaccination, deaths from this infectious disease plunge an incredible eight percent between two thousand and twenties seventeen, which quates to the prevention of about twenty one point one million deaths. Measles is still common in impoverished countries, especially those in African Asia, where vaccination levels are lower. Furthermore, outbreaks are specially damaging in

countries recovering from natural disasters or undergoing violent conflicts. In these situations, the administration of vaccines is often interrupted. Some more people are at risk of contracting the disease, and when many people end up in cramped quarters such as refugee camps or emergency shelters, the situation is ripe for an outbreak. Since measles spread so easily, transmitted mainly through coughing, sneezing, and close personal contact, virus can survive for up to

two hours in the air and on surfaces. This means an infected person can cough in one room then leave, and a second person walking into the room two hours later can contract measles simply by breathing in the contaminated air. With a highly effective and reasonably priced vaccine available, the

fight continues to eradicate measles from the earth. There's a plan in place crafted by the Measles and Rebella Initiative, a cooperative effort between the American Red Cross Centers for Disease Control and Prevention UNIS of the United Nations Foundation and the World Health Organization, but it partially depends on populations in affluent countries to do their research and not refuse vaccination due to misinformation. The hypothesis of the vaccines

cause autism has been disproven by study after study. The original study that made the claim that they do was discredited and eventually retracted. Vaccines are safe except for people with specific allergies, or with compromised immune systems, or very particular other conditions. That's why everyone who can get vaccinated should not only to protect ourselves, but to protect those who are unable to receive vaccines and thus are vulnerable

to infection. If you're not sure whether you've been vaccinated against the measles, you can try to find your vaccination records among any documents saved from your childhood, or talk to your doctor. They can check to see whether you've got immunity with a simple blood test, or you can simply get the vaccine. You'll be sure you're covered, and there's no harm in repeating it in the case that

you did receive it as a child. Today's episode was written by Melanie rad Zekie McManus and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other public health topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com, and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows