Protecting Infants from Measles
By Kelly Jordan
Measles cases are continuing to climb in the United States, with301 confirmed casesreported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as of March 14. Though these numbers are relatively low at a population level, they represent a significant cost to human health, including two deaths (one being a six-year-old child) and 50 hospitalizations. Of those with confirmed cases, 95% were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.
If the disease is not contained, it will continue to spread and hurt more people.
Measles is highly contagious, and can cause lasting damage to infected people, including brain damage and death. The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and is the most effective way to prevent the disease from spreading to others, including infants who aren’t old enough to receive the vaccine (the first dose of the two-shot vaccine is recommended at 12-15 months).
To get a better sense for how to protect infants from this measles outbreak, we spoke withStephen Patrick, MD, MPH, FAAP, chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Rollins and a practicing neonatologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
If there is an outbreak in a community and you've got an infant younger than six months old, what can be done to protect a baby from measles?
We know that the MMR vaccine is highly effective, but babies less than six months old can't receive it. The biggest thing is those who are going to be around the baby and can get vaccinated should get vaccinated. In addition, you can limit the baby’s exposure to crowds, practice handwashing and good hygiene, and feed your baby breast milk if you can (it contains antibodies that can help ward off infectious diseases).
Recent recommendations from the CDC state that if a family is traveling internationally or are in a community with an outbreak, their baby can get the first MMR dose as early as six months old. Could others get the first dose early if they are concerned even if they aren’t traveling or residing in an outbreak area?
If your infant is between six and 11 months old, it's worth talking to your pediatrician about whether they should get the MMR vaccine, because while we typically recommend the MMR vaccine for infants 12 to 15 months old, infants as young as six months old can get it.
Certainly, if you're in a community that's experiencing an outbreak, it may make sense for your six-month-old to get vaccinated.
Why don't we start MMR vaccines for babies at six or nine months old routinely?
Part of that's because it's a live vaccine, so we're letting babies mature a bit and get a more established immune system before that. But it's still worth the conversation because when we think about measles in general, in the U.S. we haven't seen outbreaks like this. So, the drive to push vaccines younger hasn't really been needed because we've had enough herd immunity. Now, as we're starting to see outbreaks, certainly in areas that are affected, it's worth having that conversation.
What big message can you share as it relates to measles and the risk it poses to newborns?
Babies in intensive care units, and even those that are not, cannot protect themselves from many, many things.
The more we can do to protect our community and those that are the smallest and most fragile, we should be doing because a three-month-old can't get a measles vaccine. The rest of us must do it to help protect them.
The other point is that there's a ton of evidence that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism. We also see a lot of evidence that not getting the MMR vaccine does cause measles outbreaks.
What I worry about is that we'll continue to see lives lost, particularly those of young children.
