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In the past 30 or so years, measles immunizations have dramatically decreased its incidence, although it has not been completely eliminated. This easily obtained preventive measure has created two generations of people who have almost no common experience with the symptom complex caused by this virus. This welcome decrease in the disease also has made many people casual or indifferent toward the available vaccinations. A verbal review of the disease might provide you with a helpful reminder of the importance of immunization.
After an incubation period of 10 to 12 days, the illness is ushered in by a fever and general rotten feeling, nothing very specific. Within 24 hours, you experience a severe runny nose, a hard cough that lasts five to 10 days or longer and can produce some phlegm, and bloodshot eyes. Often your vision becomes very sensitive to light, which causes pain. Many people who had measles recall being shut in a dark room for this reason. These symptoms increase in severity until the rash begins on about the fourth day.
About two days after the fever starts and two days before the rash appears, a classic eruption, described in 1898 by a doctor named Koplik, occurs inside the mouth on inner cheeks and/or lower lip. It consists of tiny red, flat blotches with a bluish-white speck in the center of each. They multiply for three to four days, then fade away in three more days.
The typical rash you get starts on the forehead three to four days after the first fever. The spots are red, flat to raised, smooth bumps or blotches. From the forehead, they travel south to the face, trunk, and on to the arms and legs.
Fever peaks at 103 to 105 degrees when the rash is in full bloom. By the third day, the rash has made it to the feet and also has begun to fade in the places where it first popped out. It regresses downward as well, becoming flat and brownish red with some peeling. The fever and rotten feeling start to improve by the third or fourth day of the rash. The cough can be somewhat persistent.
The complications from the infection are the real killer, literally and figuratively. The most serious is an encephalitis, infection of brain, that occurs in 0.1 percent of cases. Statistically, 10 percent of those infected die. Many others are left with serious defects of function or thought.
“Black measles” happens when the virus mysteriously causes clotting factors to be used up, and abnormal bleeding problems begin. Pneumonia or a secondary bacterial infection is not an infrequent occurrence, either. In pregnant women who become infected, the fetus dies 20 percent of the time. It can also cause birth defects.
Occasionally, the common eye inflammation can lead to corneal inflammation and various degrees of blindness. All of the above adverse effects happen infrequently, but when they do, they are tragic.
This rather spotty review in words may not be as hot a number as the actual illness. But the infection is a certain show stopper if you get it. The vaccination may cause a mild version of the disease, but nothing like the real thing. It makes immunization worthwhile, wouldn’t you say?
