Why Does Measles Reset Your Immune System?

After the measles vaccine spread, researchers noticed that the death toll from many other diseases dropped. Learn how the measles destroys your immunity to other diseases, and why the vaccine is safe for most people, in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren vocal bomb here. Anyone around in the nineteen sixties
and earlier knew not to mess with the measles. Measles
a k A. Rabela is a dangerous and highly contagious
infectious disease. It was common knowledge back then that if
you're lucky, measles merely came with a high fever, cough,

(00:23):
running nose, red watery eyes, and the infections signature angry
red rash. But if you're not so lucky, you can
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.

(00:44):
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

(01:05):
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

(01:28):
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

(01:50):
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

(02:12):
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

(02:33):
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

(02:55):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:42):
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

(04:04):
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

(04:26):
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

(04:48):
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

(05:10):
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

(05:32):
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

(05:55):
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

(06:16):
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

(06:38):
Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other
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