MedPageToday How much do you know about its most dire consequences?
In the late 1990s, my long-time colleague, Pam Nagami, MD, met a petite, Indian-American student she later called “Manju” when writing a terrific bookopens in a new tab or window about patients with infectious diseases. Some of the stories by Nagami end happily, but Manju’s did not — and all because of a case of measles she contracted early in life.
So, now that WHO experts are predicting that more than half the world could face serious measles outbreaksopens in a new tab or window by the end of this year, I’ve begun to wonder: just how many modern-day doctors, much less vaccine-hesitant parents, know the virus’s most calamitous blows?
Mind you, I’m not just talking about classic complicationsopens in a new tab or window — pneumonia in one in 20 infected children, acute encephalitis in one in 1,000, death in as many as three in 1,000 children — but stealthy assaults that are sometimes far deadlier.
In the case of Manju, who was adopted by a single mom in Chicago when she was not yet 2 years old, 20 years had passed before the girl from Calcutta with big, brown eyes showed early, non-specific signs of subacute sclerosing panencephalitisopens in a new tab or window (SSPE), a rare but fatal condition in which measles lies dormant, then goes rogue in a person’s brain. Soon Manju was losing her vision and started to stutter, stumble, and twitch. Her diagnosis was confirmed by an EEG and measles-specific antibodies in her spinal fluid. Finally, 10 months after Nagami started administering twice-per-week, intrathecal injections of alpha-interferonopens in a new tab or window in a last-ditch effort to prolong Manju’s life, her patient was dead.