Measles: The race to understand 'immune amnesia' (2024) | Hacker News Reader

Measles: The race to understand 'immune amnesia' (2024)

bbc.com

50 pointsmooreds23 comments

Because I know someone else is thinking it:

> Unfortunately there's no evidence this immune reset can be beneficial for those who have malfunctioning immune systems, such as people with autoimmune disorders – and even if it was, Swart points out that measles-based treatments would only work in those who had never encountered measles or the vaccine before.

I would love to have a bit more detail on why this is a non-starter, though I appreciate it’s likely that the answer is too complicated for a layperson to really understand.

It's a not a nonstarter. It's just somehow become that "no evidence for" has become synonymous with that.

Despite a lack of evidence, there are still some very interesting avenues of discovery potentially applicable on the autoimmune and allergy front here based on these measles-induced immune amnesia revelations:

How measles virus specifically targets memory T and B cells through the SLAM receptor?

The mechanism behind measles' paradoxical ability to erase pre-existing immunity while generating strong anti-measles memory

Understanding the 2-3 year timeline required for immune memory reconstitution after measles infection

Developing methods to accelerate immune memory recovery after memory cell depletion

Creating targeted approaches that could mimic measles' memory-erasing effect for specific harmful immune responses

Investigating biomarkers that could predict successful immune reset and monitor recovery

The article is from last year, 2024.

It does describe the immune system reset in a way that helps to understand why measles should be avoided but I wonder whether there are more recent study results that can add to the information in this article.

We currently are watching the spread across Texas and New Mexico from here in N Texas and hope that other people are also paying attention. Really makes me think twice before attending any large public gatherings or even going to the grocery store during the busy times of the week.

We have a large enough population of people who refuse vaccines and other treatments for religious reasons that the threat of spread up here is real.

> Really makes me think twice before attending any large public gatherings or even going to the grocery store during the busy times of the week.

Huh? Are you unvaccinated? Yes, obviously spread is likely, as that article explains the R number for measles is very high and the US has very poor compliance rates.

It’s a little bit more complicated than “are you vaxxed,” though only a little.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/21/nx...

Tl;dr: If you were born before 1968 and did not have measles as a child, you should consider getting vaccinated again.

Good advice.

Even the best vaccines aren’t 100% effective, and many lose potency after a number of years. Tetanus being one that should be re-upped about every decade, for instance.

They often work in stamping out things (and ensuring that particularly vulnerable groups like those too young to vaccinate, or with weakened immune systems like the old) by reducing the spread enough that outbreaks die out one their own.

Think of it like setting population ‘backfires’ so there isn’t enough fuel for it to turn into a spreading fire.

If large portions of the population don’t immunize, it will get enough momentum that it can cause real damage - even for many people with prior immunizations.

This isn't a tetanus outbreak (tetanus is not infectious) so the fact that Tetanus shots need a periodic booster isn't relevant. The measles vaccine is very reliable, if you had two MMR shots you're done, you'll see 97% reported sometimes, that's what happens when you use sampling and can't prove it's 100% effective.

What I'm asking the parent was - why are they acting as if they'll get infected? If it's because they've chosen not to vaccinate well, yeah, that's how consequences work.

Presumably proving 100% efficacy is impossible. Among other things, there are immune disorders that ensure you're still at risk even if fully vaccinated. And anyone is at risk with a depressed immune system, which can be caused by sleep, diet, stress, unrelated illness, pregnancy, etc etc. and finally remember that vaccinated people still get infected, they just are able to fight the infection with high success rate (you claim 100% but 3% is a big gap to explain away). Even people who successfully fight the infection completely unsymptomatically likely incur a cost to their organs and immune system as a result.

Even with vaccinations, you should attempt to avoid risk of infection if you can.

>Even with vaccinations, you should attempt to avoid risk of infection if you can.

This is especially true when the circulating affliction can be spread silently by vaccinated persons who have no symptoms but can be actively shedding virus.

I know someone who had to have her antibodies tested (before working in a lab), and realized vaccines were less effective for her (she had half to a quarter of necessary antibodies) and had to retake a lot of boosters, including 'mmr' (it has another name here) and hepatitis.

I'm probably much older than a lot of y'all. As a kid, I had measles, mumps and chickenpox, all acquired at school when I was young as did most of my siblings. My younger siblings grew up after MMR was available and never had the direct experience with it since they were vaccinated before they started school.

I just had to check when these vaccines became available. I remember my Mum being strict about getting all my shots, but I still managed to get measles, and chickenpox twice. I just had to ask GPT why the nurse gave me a sugar lump to eat, and apparently that was polio vaccine.

I predate the chickenpox vaccine and I predate the advice to get two measles shots.

I too had the sugarcube polio vaccine. I had no idea what polio was but Mom told me that it was a bad disease that had left one of my uncles partially paralyzed. He caught polio as a young teen and had a limp until he passed away at nearly 80. Another uncle ended up deaf in one ear from a childhood infection that I think was meningitis. It left him ineligible to serve during the Vietnam War with a couple of his brothers and cousins though he tried to join every branch.

Oral Polio Vaccine. It's actually both more effective and cheaper than the injected vaccine used today, as well as being attractive to children (well at least me) because it's in the form of a weird fluid dripped onto a sugar code - looks like it might turn you into a superhero.

The reason we don't use OPV in the rich industrial countries any more is that we don't have Polio here, so the improved efficacy and lower price aren't a worthwhile trade for the small but real risk of it reverting in some patients and producing an outbreak of Polio in the residual unvaccinated population.

Then the very good news is that you needn't worry, as the article explains the one thing your body is now extremely good at is killing the measles virus. "Immune amnesia" here takes the form of (after infection with measles) an unhealthy singular focus on killing measles. Lots of immune capacity in your body is still, decades later, focused on this enemy, if you were to deliberately inhale the coughs and splutters of an infected person your body's defences will go to town on the invaders -

.... Once on a school trip (like you I'm pretty old, so, we're talking 1980s) to the zoo I saw a little garden bird plop itself down near a big cat. No harm meant of course, but the cat just smashed it - one paw covered in razor sharp talons, lightning fast, dead bird. That's the fate of any unfortunate measles virus which got inside you, even all this time later.

I don't necessarily worry about measles, it's all the other things that the locals around here are politically conditioned to ignore. If something else came down the pike and people were dropping like flies a lot of my neighbors would blissfully continue as they always had with no regard for anyone else in the building.

My grandmother was a nurse. All of my sisters became nurses. Two of my aunts are/were nurses who followed in their Mom's footsteps. A couple of my cousins became EMTs and another is a microbiologist. One of my kids is a biologist. I'm a geophysicist so not quite the same. My family has a pretty good feel on the pulse of the region where we live, which things are problems today and which could be if people are not paying attention. Luckily many of the societal issues that have torn other families apart have not affected us. We're a pretty tight group and we look out for each other. Too bad that others have been conditioned to be so selfish that ordinary people have to wonder what they could be spreading this week.

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones who got measles and had no long term issues. I still remember the warm soak in the tub to help control the fever.

It's pretty funny that all of us kids and cousins remember the same thing about visits to grandmas. It was like it was a perfect opportunity for her to practice her skills. We all had to take our turn getting checked out for everything from diabetes to pinworms. If you showed up with a sore throat you were definitely gonna get some merthiolate or mercurochrome swabbing. A cough got you some of the nastiest tasting cough syrup - don't worry it tastes like wild cherries - and after that you might end up like me and go years before tasting a real cherry because the memory of that syrup was so dominant.

I have family up around Lubbock where the Texas outbreak is growing. That's originally why I commented on this story, because I had discussed that outbreak with them that morning since I knew they were not in a position to follow all this stuff in real time due to their job duties.

And don't forget the role RFK Jr played in vaccine hesitancy in Samoa...

> On June 4, 2019, during a visit to Samoa coinciding with its 57th annual independence celebration, Kennedy appeared in an Instagram photo with Australian-Samoan anti-vaccine activist Taylor Winterstein. Kennedy's charity and Winterstein have both perpetuated the allegation that the MMR vaccine played a role in the 2018 deaths of two Samoan infants, despite the subsequent revelation that the infants had mistakenly received a muscle relaxant along with the vaccine. Kennedy has drawn criticism for fueling vaccine hesitancy amid a social climate that gave rise to the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak, which killed over 70 people, and the 2019 Tonga measles outbreak.

Also described on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wikipedia page:

"Samoa measles outbreak" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_Jr

This complete denial of institutions and experts is fueled by the complete baseless confidence in effortless expertise and success that social media have been promoting.

People have been convinced they can be making boatloads of money, printing cash from day trading, traveling the world 24x7x365, being PhD level experts on everything etc instantly and effortlessly.

Just because l I watched LeBron James on YouTube does not make me capable of dunking.

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