Monitoring Desk
LONDON: Measles can infiltrate the brain and kill children several years after infection, experts have warned.
They fear rates of a lethal brain disease triggered by measles will rise due to plummeting vaccination rates.
Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) used to be considered extremely rare – affecting just one in every 100,000 children with measles.
The serious disease nearly disappeared as more people were vaccinated against the bug.
But now, cases of measles have reached a three-year high, as parents are not vaccinating their children.
The latest NHS figures show that MMR jab uptake is the lowest since 2010/11, with only 84.5 per cent of children having received both doses by age five.
This is well below the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) recommended immunity rate of 95 per cent.
Up to 102,000 children in England aged four and five started reception this year without being jabbed, meaning they are at high risk.
“We suspect SSPE cases will rise again as well,” Iris Yousaf, a PhD candidate at Mayo Clinic Graduate School, said.
“This is sad because this horrible disease can be prevented by vaccination.”
According to doctors, the MMR vaccine is the only safeguard against SSPE.
Measles commonly causes a fever, runny nose, cough, red eyes, sore throat and a distinctive rash – with the virus usually clearing within two weeks.
However, in rare cases, it spreads to the brain, where it can lie dormant for years – and sometimes even decades.
SSPE causes memory loss, mood changes, involuntary jerking movements, muscle spasms, and occasional blindness.
Eventually, patients may become comatose or enter a persistent vegetative state – and death is inevitable as a result of fever, heart failure, or the brain’s inability to control vital organs.
As part of a new study into the virus, Mayo Clinic scientists looked at the brain of someone who had died of SSPE several years after contracting measles.
Writing in the journal PLOS Pathogens, scientists from the Mayo Clinic said the measles virus alters in dangerous ways once it infiltrates the brain.
“Our study provides compelling data that shows how viral RNA mutated and spread throughout a human organ – the brain, in this case,” said author, Dr Roberto Cattaneo.
“Our discoveries will help in studying and understanding how other viruses persist and adapt to the human brain, causing disease.
“This knowledge may facilitate the generation of effective antiviral drugs.”
