A case report of measles in a premature infant and the antibody and/or the virus RNA in the patients contracted in infancy
We treated a two-month-old infant, delivered prematurely at 32 weeks of gestational age who contracted measles from his mother. We checked him regularly for ten years because of the risk of developing subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). As a result he has been healthy, but his measles specific IgG antibody titer became negative after five years and was subsequently boosted with a vaccination. Thus, we determined the IgG and IgM antibodies with an ELISA kit in the participating 11 healthy children, who were diagnosed as having measles under one year old at our hospital between 2000 and 2006. Two boys had an IgG antibody titer of above the upper detection limit, but no participants were negative. The measles RNA was not detected with the loop-mediated isothermal amplification in plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells in the two patients. There have been some reports of an early onset and rapidly progressive SSPE after perinatal measles. We infer that specific immunity disappearance after infection at an early age due to immature immunity may be associated with activating the measles virus remaining in the brain. (Accepted on June 20, 2011)
