How Measles Hacks the Body--and Harms Its Victims for Years

[littlemissmartypants]

Last edited Wed Mar 5, 2025, 01:34 AM - Edit history (1)

Megan Molteni
Science
Feb 14, 2019 7:00 AM

How Measles Hacks the Body—and Harms Its Victims for Years
The virus is the most contagious in the world, exploiting the human body's immune system to spread with extreme agility and harming its victims for years.

It’s 2019, and all over the world measles is once again splotching across headlines. An ongoing outbreak in the Philippines has so far infected 4,300. In Ukraine more than 15,000 people have caught the disease since December, the country’s largest epidemic since the invention of vaccines. Madagascar is having its own worst outbreak in decades, with more than 50,000 cases since October, including 300 deaths.

The numbers in the US are smaller, for now, due to high vaccination rates nationwide. But in isolated pockets of the country where anti-vaxx sentiment is high, the disease has come surging back. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently tracking just over 100 cases across five outbreaks in Washington, New York, and Texas.

Among airborne respiratory pathogens, measles is an elite virus—the most contagious disease in the world. If you give this virus a lung, it’ll take a town. A cough from an infected person on a subway car would spread the disease to 90 out of 100 unprotected people. The virus stays alive, airborne outside the body of its human host, for up to two hours. For years scientists puzzled over how exactly measles achieves its contagion-in-chief status. But advances in microscopy and genetics have finally begun to illuminate what makes the virus so damn catchy.

“It’s really two things,” says Roberto Cattaneo, a molecular biologist at the Mayo Clinic who has been studying the measles virus for more than three decades. The first has to do with the kind of cells the virus infects first: alveolar macrophages. These immune cells patrol your airways, hoovering up and degrading bits of dust, pollen, and any other foreign objects that you breathe in. They also have a surface receptor the exact shape of a measles protein. “They’re supposed to be on a mission to destroy viruses, and instead they act as a shuttle, delivering measles straight to the closest lymph nodes.”

Snip...
https://www.wired.com/story/how-measles-hacks-the-body-and-harms-its-victims-for-years/?_sp=e02f2fca-e7bc-46c8-b41a-b8b5eabb2f6e.1741149331421

❤️pants
Edit to add archive link:
https://www.archivebuttons.com/articles?article=https://www.wired.com/story/how-measles-hacks-the-body-and-harms-its-victims-for-years/?_sp=e02f2fca-e7bc-46c8-b41a-b8b5eabb2f6e.1741149331421

[mucifer]

1. If you are older and were vaccinated as a kid, check your MMR titers. Mine were low I required 2 shots.

[Pachamama]

2. Great article - Measles virus evolved into a real super efficient warrior

It’s amazing when you read about the viruses and even the shape and how they are optimized for maximum destruction.

But don’t worry - Bobby says to take your Vitamin A.

[young_at_heart]

3. I had a very bad case of measles when I was in the 6th grade.

I was out of school for nearly 6 weeks! After that I had lots of respiratory problems.....in fact, they never stopped. I read once that measles can wreck your immune system. I had to give up teaching because I kept catching colds, bronchitis, etc. from the kids.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. What measles parties?