{"id":5959,"date":"2024-02-27T14:48:14","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T20:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=5959"},"modified":"2024-02-27T14:48:18","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T20:48:18","slug":"measles-deadliest-sequelae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/02\/27\/measles-deadliest-sequelae\/","title":{"rendered":"Measles’ Deadliest Sequelae"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MedPageToday<\/a> \u00a0How much do you know about its most dire consequences? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, now that WHO experts are predicting that more than half the world could face serious\u00a0measles outbreaksopens in a new tab or window<\/a>\u00a0by 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? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mind you, I’m not just talking about classic complicationsopens in a new tab or window<\/a> — 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a> (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<\/a> in a last-ditch effort to prolong Manju’s life, her patient was dead.<\/p>\nYK TmEUK SM R<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MedPageToday \u00a0How 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5960,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5959\/revisions\/5960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}