Unexpected beneficial effects of measles immunisation

• Published in: BMJ 2000-04, Vol.320 (7239), p.938-940
• Main Authors: Dalton, Craig, Emerton, David, Buckoke, Clinton, Finlay, Robin, Engler, Tomas, Shann, Frank, Aaby, Peter
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age; Child mortality; Child nutrition; Childhood; Children; Children & youth; Confidence intervals; Developing countries; Disease outbreaks; Editorials; Epidemiology; Health care; Hospitals; Hypotheses; Illnesses; LDCs; Letters; Measles; Measles vaccines; Mortality; Socioeconomic factors; Studies; Tetanus; Vaccination; Vaccines; Whooping cough
• ISSN: 0959-8138; 1468-5833; 1756-1833
• DOI: 10.1136/bmj.320.7239.938

Studies published then documenting effects of clinical measles on the immune response were accepted as a reasonable explanation. [...]Shann's editorial on measles comes as a welcome reminder of things forgotten.\n Fourthly, studies that have controlled for socioeconomic factors have still found that measles immunisation reduced mortality by 36% to 90%. The large reduction in mortality after immunisation is unlikely to be the result of the prevention of delayed deaths from measles because immunised children who have not had measles have a much lower mortality than unimmunised children who have not had measles. 1 Subclinical measles infection is certainly common in both immunised and unimmunised children in developing countries, but such infections have no effect on nutritional indices or mortality. 2 In two randomised controlled trials in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, children were given high titre Edmonston-Zagreb (EZ) vaccine at 4-5 months of age or standard Schwarz vaccine at 9-10 months. 2 Girls given EZ vaccine had a death rate that was 1.95 and 1.76 times respectively that of girls given Schwarz vaccine.