As measles roars back, scientists find antibodies that could offer protection
Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.
Using the blood of a 56-year-old woman vaccinated against measles, scientists have isolated a fighting force of four potent virus-blocking antibodies that could pave the way toward a treatment for people exposed to the highly contagious respiratory disease making a comeback in the United States.
A safe, highly effective vaccine for measles has been available since the 1960s, and the U.S. officially eliminated the disease in 2000, with sporadic cases and outbreaks. But dropping vaccination rates have sparked large outbreaks in multiple states, and the country is edging closer to the virus spreading freely again-which puts more people at risk.
New ways to block or treat measles would be particularly important for people who are immunocompromised and babies under the age of 1, because they are not eligible for the vaccine, leaving them unprotected amid a growing number of cases.
“Measles was a problem that was solved. Until it wasn’t solved anymore,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire, president of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who led the study published Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. But she and other scientists stressed that this approach was not a substitute for a vaccine.
https://www.yahoo.com/news...
Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.
Using the blood of a 56-year-old woman vaccinated against measles, scientists have isolated a fighting force of four potent virus-blocking antibodies that could pave the way toward a treatment for people exposed to the highly contagious respiratory disease making a comeback in the United States.
A safe, highly effective vaccine for measles has been available since the 1960s, and the U.S. officially eliminated the disease in 2000, with sporadic cases and outbreaks. But dropping vaccination rates have sparked large outbreaks in multiple states, and the country is edging closer to the virus spreading freely again-which puts more people at risk.
New ways to block or treat measles would be particularly important for people who are immunocompromised and babies under the age of 1, because they are not eligible for the vaccine, leaving them unprotected amid a growing number of cases.
“Measles was a problem that was solved. Until it wasn’t solved anymore,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire, president of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who led the study published Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. But she and other scientists stressed that this approach was not a substitute for a vaccine.
https://www.yahoo.com/news...
28 days ago
