Researchers from Princeton University, Emory University, the US National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center, and Erasmus University Medical Center in The Netherlands led by Dr. Michael Mina, postdoctoral fellow at Princeton, published a study that examined the presence of a correlation between measles incidence and non-measles mortality in England, Wales, the United States, and Denmark. These researchers used Project Tycho weekly measles case counts for all 50 US states from 1928 to 2002.
Authors
C. Jessica E. Metcalf
A.D.M.E. Osterhaus
Bryan T. Grenfell
Related Project Tycho Datasets
United States of America - Measles
Abstract
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.
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