UHS Urges New Measles Shots

As part of a campaign to prevent an outbreak of measles on campus, University Health Services (UHS) is advising any student, staff or faculty member born since 1957 to be revaccinated against the disease.

The UHS director of medical- surgical clinics, Dr. Peter Zuromskis, said there have been numerous cases of people who were vaccinated between 1957 and 1980 contracting measles because of ineffective or badly administered vaccines.

Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta plans to recommend next month that every U.S. school, college and university offer a second dose of measles vaccine to anyone born after January 1, 1957, said Robert H. Snyder, a public health advisor for the federal agency.

Besides the well-known rash and spots that measles causes, it usually causes a fever and in extremely rare cases can lead to encephalitis, a deadly brain tissue inflammation.

Trish J. Pugliese, senior epidemiologist with the state Commission for Communicable Diseases, said about 70 percent of the 120 cases of measles in Massachusetts since January have occurred in secondary schools and college campuses.

"The scenario where outbreaks have access is principally in college campuses," said Zuromskis. "What typically happens is that a student goes out of the country and develops a case when he comes back to school. The problem is that people can usually transmit measles by the time they know they've got it."

Zuromskis said studies show 20 percent of the people who should have been innoculated against measles between 1957 and 1980 do not have antibodies to the virus. Also, Zuromskis said, the vaccine that was used between 1957 and 1967 was not fully effective.

"Generally we assume that people who were born before 1957 have had measles and are immune to it," Zuromskis said. "Subsequent to that there was a vaccine that was less than 100 percent effective--so everyone that had been vaccinated before 1967 but after 1957 was partially protected."

Zuromskis said those vaccinated between 1957 and 1967 "get a different kind of measles. We have to consider those folks as really not immune at all."

Zuromskis also said that cases have been reported in which people inoculated between 1967 and 1980 had developed measles, despite the belief that that particular vaccine was fully effective. "People who had proper vaccine got measles. It is possible that a small number of people got a vaccine that may have been less that 100 percent effective," he said.

But Zuromskis said the vaccine used after 1980 provided complete protection.

UHS has about 1700 doses of vaccine, and has placed ads in most undergraduate and graduate student publications.