Measles virus causes immune system to "amnesia"? Tightening the vaccine to prevent "seat belts"

Recently, two research papers published in science and science immunology show that measles virus can eliminate immune memory of other pathogens and put children at risk of other fatal diseases.measles is a viral infectious disease. The general symptoms include fever, fatigue and obvious rash. However, in some cases, measles virus can lead to serious complications and even death.at present, there is no specific drug. Before the introduction of measles vaccine, almost every child was infected with this highly infectious virus. Since the advent of the vaccine in 1963, the number of measles cases in the world has been constantly decreasing, saving tens of millions of lives.but after 2018, this downward trend has been reversed, mainly due to the decrease in the number of vaccinations, and the number of cases reported globally in 2019 is almost three times that of last year.DOI: 10.1126/ science.aay6485 Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard School of public health and one of the authors of the science paper, said the reversal of the trend is particularly worrying because researchers believe the vaccine is more than just protecting children from measles.he said that in the 1960s and 1970s, "every time a vaccine was introduced in a new area, child mortality would plummet", which could not be explained by measles prevention alone.one of the theories behind the unexpected drop in mortality is that vaccines promote an overall enhancement of the immune system.moreover, studies of measles epidemic populations have shown that the number of deaths caused by other infectious diseases has increased in the months and even years after the outbreak, which indicates that measles makes patients vulnerable to other fatal infectious diseases. Therefore, vaccines can not only prevent measles, but also prevent this weakening of the immune system.despite the strong epidemiological evidence, Mina said, "we do need some biological data to support it."to this end, Mina and her colleagues analyzed blood samples from 77 unvaccinated children (members of religious groups who chose to give up vaccination) before and after measles infection, as well as five other unvaccinated children not infected with the virus and 59 age-matched vaccinated control samples.a tool called VirSCAN is used for analysis, which can detect antibodies against thousands of epitopes and more than 400 virus and bacterial pathogens in blood.measles virus infection can reduce antibody diversity. Studies have found that measles poses a much greater threat to people than we thought. After two months of recovery from measles infection, children lose 11% to 73% of their antibodies, which means that the immune memory of the pathogen they have previously encountered will be impaired. In the unvaccinated children who are not infected with measles and those who have been vaccinated, children who have not been vaccinated against measles have lost 11% to 73% of their antibodies No such loss was found.the researchers also observed a similar loss of antibody diversity in monkeys that were not vaccinated with measles virus.DOI: 10.1126/ sciimmunol.aay6125 At the same time, velislava Petrova, an immunologic geneticist at Wellcome Sanger Institute, and colleagues in Science In immunology, we analyzed the sequence of B cell receptor in the same blood sample. The B cell receptor is essentially a nonsecretory form of antibody that resides in the B cell membrane. The study found that, like the antibody, due to measles infection, the previous antigen-specific B cell receptor sequence was also sharply reduced.Dr velislava Petrova, the team also studied the effects of measles like virus infection in ferrets, some ferrets lost their resistance to the influenza vaccine provided.these two independent studies reveal the importance of vaccines against measles.Stephen elledge, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, agrees that people use safety belts to prevent serious injuries in car accidents. These studies show that "measles is like an accident of the immune system." he said that vaccines are "like seat belts" and people should "fasten seat belts.". end reference: [1] measures virus infection diminutes preexisting antibiotics that offer protection from other pathways [2] incomplete genetic reconstruction of B cell pools contributions to prolonged immunosuppression after measures [3] measures leaves the immune system vulnerable to other diseases