Publication Date:
2015-05-09
Description:
Immunosuppression after measles is known to predispose people to opportunistic infections for a period of several weeks to months. Using population-level data, we show that measles has a more prolonged effect on host resistance, extending over 2 to 3 years. We find that nonmeasles infectious disease mortality in high-income countries is tightly coupled to measles incidence at this lag, in both the pre- and post-vaccine eras. We conclude that long-term immunologic sequelae of measles drive interannual fluctuations in nonmeasles deaths. This is consistent with recent experimental work that attributes the immunosuppressive effects of measles to depletion of B and T lymphocytes. Our data provide an explanation for the long-term benefits of measles vaccination in preventing all-cause infectious disease. By preventing measles-associated immune memory loss, vaccination protects polymicrobial herd immunity.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Mina, Michael J -- Metcalf, C Jessica E -- de Swart, Rik L -- Osterhaus, A D M E -- Grenfell, Bryan T -- T32 GM008169/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 May 8;348(6235):694-9. doi: 10.1126/science.aaa3662. Epub 2015 May 7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. Medical Scientist Training Program, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA. michael.j.mina@gmail.com. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. ; Department of Viroscience, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25954009" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
B-Lymphocytes/immunology
;
Child
;
*Child Mortality
;
Child, Preschool
;
England/epidemiology
;
Female
;
Humans
;
Immunologic Memory
;
*Immunomodulation
;
Incidence
;
Lymphocyte Depletion
;
Male
;
Measles/*epidemiology/*immunology/prevention & control
;
Measles Vaccine/administration & dosage/*immunology
;
Opportunistic Infections/immunology/*mortality/*prevention & control
;
T-Lymphocytes/immunology
;
Time Factors
;
United States/epidemiology
;
Vaccination
;
Wales/epidemiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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