Measles Vaccine: Not Worth Skipping

Infectious disease experts are again reminding parents to get their children vaccinated for measles after a new report shows a fatal measles complication is occurring at higher rates than thought.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, found one in 609 infants with measles later developed subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) — a neurological disorder that can appear years after a person is infected with measles. It is always fatal.

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The rate of SSPE for those infected before the age of five was one-in-1,387 and the median age of diagnosis with SSPE was 12 years, but it developed in patients as young as three years and as old as 35.

“That is a very frightening surprise,” said Dr. James Cherry, a research professor in pediatric infectious diseases at UCLA, and part of the study team.

“Where many people fall down on this is they start talking about risk of vaccines when we should talk about risk of disease,” Cherry added, according to Reuters. The report is called “Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis: The Devastating Measles Complication Is More Common Than We Think.”

Related: If You Say ‘No’ to Vaccines, Say ‘Bye’ to Doc

Researchers hope the data encourages parents who have refused vaccines to get the shot for their children. They also hope parents heed a warning about traveling with unprotected children to countries where measles is endemic. “No child should go to Europe or the Philippines who hasn’t had two doses of measles vaccine. It’s just too risky,” Cherry said.

The study was presented at IDWeek 2016, the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the HIV Medicine Association, and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

Dr. Gary S. Marshall, professor of pediatrics at the University of Louisville, also stressed the importance of herd immunity, or vaccinating as many people as possible to protect infants and people who are immunocompromised.

“Every unvaccinated child is taking another chip away from the wall that prevents the community from having outbreaks of measles,” Dr. Marshall said, according to Reuters. “And if enough of them chip away at the wall, there will be disease again and there will be bad complications.”