Increase in Measles cases in the USA

The recent new cases of measles in some of the regions in USA has sent a panic alarm and social debate has sprung up about vaccination of children against the common contagious diseases that are known to kill many children in other parts of the world. The only way to protect the precious life is by vaccination, a proven strategy against the contagious diseases. The USA had declared in the year 2000 that country was free of measles. However, occurrence of new cases and rapid spread has shown deficiency in the vaccination program.

Measles is a viral disease, highly contagious and can spread rapidly in a human settlement. The disease mostly affects children, and cause infection of the respiratory system, skin and the immune system. The disease develops in 1-2 weeks after the exposure to the virus and some of the initial symptoms include high fever, running nose, redness in eyes, loss of appetite and accompanied with body rashes. The body generally recuperates from the infection in couple of weeks provided no other complications develop.

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Although majority of the patients recovers, in some patients complication may lead to pneumonia, and in some rare cases, 1 in 100,000, it may result in measles encephalitis which is fatal. Those who survive may develop mental illness and retardation.

According to a report in 2011, despite an increase in overall vaccination, 6.7 million children did not receive vaccination for measles in India leading to measles outbreak and 29,339 measles cases were registered that year. According to Center for disease control (CDC) an estimated 20 million people get measles Worldwide and nearly 146,000 people die from the disease each year—that equals about 440 deaths every day. Therefore, preventing the occurrence of viral infection by vaccination is one safe way of protection from the disease.

Many scientifically unsound correlation studies have claimed that vaccination likely results in the autism which has deterred many parents from vaccinating their wards. In many state of the USA the laws related to vaccination has been relaxed and option of vaccination has been left to choice. Scientists assert that link between autism and vaccination is only correlational and no causal link between two could stand the scientific scrutiny.  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief medical correspondent of CNN argues that while the amount of vaccine used in single shot has declined over the years and the incidences of autism has increased over this duration nevertheless (see below). This suggests that there is no direct link between the vaccine and autism.  

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CDC recommends that all the children should get two doses of MMR vaccine, starting with the first dose at 12 through 15 months of age, and the second dose at 4 through 6 years of age.

As the age-old adage goes, “prevention is better than cure”, therefore vaccination should be considered seriously for preventing the precious life of unsuspecting children that are threatened by the deadly diseases.

Vaccination against One Pathogen may protect others!

There has been debate and concerns regarding the annual flu vaccine here in USA, and people have been debating to get one or not get one.

Scientifically however, the case is in its favor. It has emerged out that vaccination created memory immune cells not only protect us from the pathogen against which vaccine was made, but also from other pathogens.

Scientists from Stanford University California have found that the T cells, a kind of immune cells, derived from healthy individuals recognized the HIV virus and responded to it as if they had seen the viral antigen before. This kind of response is expected from vaccinated or pre-infected individuals, but it is important to note that the blood donors in this study were neither vaccinated with HIV vaccine nor were ever infected, and they had tested negative for HIV.

T cells are a kind of white blood cells that carry CD4 antigens on them, and participate in launching immune response against a foreign pathogenic, viral or bacterial, proteins. The T cells, also called memory cells, are made when a bacterial or viral protein is present in the body either due to vaccination or some kind of infection.

In the people infected from HIV virus, the T-cells lose the capacity to launch an immune attack, and infetced person develops the condition called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Such patients are thus likely to get other infections rather easily due to weakened immunity.

On the contrary when the scientists tested the umbilical cord blood from the new born, who had never ‘seen’ a foreign protein, they found no signs of any memory T cells. It explains why infants and younger children are more prone to catch infections, thus need vaccination.

The scientist also found that T cells from flu vaccinated people were able to recognize the antigens from other bacterial species other than from flu. They believe that this is possible by cross-reactivity to varied antigens and it may be a major mechanism in making populations of memory T cells for infectious diseases that an individual has not yet developed.

This study thus proposes to explain how vaccination against one disease may protect from other diseases as well. The study also signifies the influence of pathogen-rich versus hygienic environments in developing immunity to new pathogens that may impact child and adult health.