A Fully Vaccinated Woman
Contracted And Then Spread the Measles
This is the first time health officials
have encountered a Typhoid Mary-like situation for measles
For the first time, experts have confirmed that a fully
vaccinated person both contracted and spread the measles. The
patient in question—a 22-year-old theater employee in New York
City—contracted measles in 2011,
ScienceNOW reports. The patient fell into the rare
category— less than 1 percent of people fully vaccinated for the
measles—of a "vaccine failure." But rather than keep her in the
hospital, doctors sent her home on the assumption that she would
not be able to transmit the disease to others.
Here's ScienceNOW on how that decision played out:
Like Typhoid Mary, this patient turned out to be
unwittingly contagious. Ultimately, she transmitted the
measles to four other people, according to a recent report
in Clinical Infectious Diseases that tracked symptoms in the
88 people with whom “Measles Mary” interacted while she was
sick. Surprisingly, two of the secondary patients had been
fully vaccinated. And although the other two had no record
of receiving the vaccine, they both showed signs of previous
measles exposure that should have conferred immunity.
So how did this happen? The woman's immune system,
the Daily Beast reports, "responded as though it had never
seen the virus before." The measles vaccine works 95 percent of
the time, which is why people are given two shots—just in case
they fall into that five percent category. It turns out that the
woman in question was a "statistical anomaly," the Daily Beast
writes. But what about the people she infected who had also
received the vaccine? Why did they, too, contract the disease?
The Beast:
The report suggests that vaccinated people may lose their
immunity as they age. In the past, measles in the community
effectively provided a booster for vaccinated people. Now
that the virus is mostly gone, their immune systems may be
“forgetting” the disease, [epidemiologist George] Rutherford
said.
Experts told the Daily Beast that, rather than freaking out
and giving everyone a measles booster shot, a better course of
action would be to make sure everyone is vaccinated in the first
place. This case, experts remind, is an extreme anomaly.
According to the CDC, 80 percent of measles cases in the U.S.
are contracted by people who have not been vaccinated, and many
of those cases are picked up when traveling abroad to places
with higher rates of measles. When the unvaccinated person
brings measles back to the U.S., problems ensue, especially if
she or he comes into contact with other unvaccinated people. As
the Daily Beast notes, "Measles is very contagious, and in
unvaccinated settings, one patient can transmit it to 9 of 10
others with whom the patient has contact."
Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fully-vaccinated-woman-contracted-and-then-spread-measles-180951114/#qT0OxvSrBW4pQHvy.99
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