Flutterby™! : Measles and the immune reset

NPR: Scientists crack a 50 year old mystery about the measles vaccine: why, when the measles vaccine was introduced, did childhood deaths from all infection plummet dramatically?

This idea of "immune amnesia" is still just a hypothesis and needs more testing, says epidemiologist William Moss, who has studied the measles vaccine for more than a decade at Johns Hopkins University.

But the new study, he says, provides "compelling evidence" that measles affects the immune system for two to three years. That's much longer than previously thought

The study is Long-term measles-induced immunomodulation increases overall childhood infectious disease mortality in the journal Science.