Long-term Follow-up of Protective Measles Antibodies in the Two-dose Study of Standard-titre Measles Vaccine in Guinea-Bissau

Objective To determine persistence of measles antibodies among children who received either one or two doses of Edmonston-Zagreb (EZ) or Schwarz (SW) measles vaccine.

Background The World Health Organization has targeted measles for eradication by the year 2010, and although measles incidence has fallen drastically in many parts of the world, several factors could hinder the eradication goal.

First, there is no indication of improved measles immunisation coverage world wide, vaccination coverage fell in all regions of the world from 1997 to 1998, except in the Western Pacific, so the general measles immunisation coverage came down to 72%. Very high vaccination coverage of ≥ 95% is needed to interrupt transmission of the highly contagious measles virus.

Primary and secondary vaccine failure constitute another significant problem to measles control, and the HIV pandemic contributes to increased vaccine failure, and permits transmission of measles virus despite high rates of immunisation coverage.

Sub-clinical measles has been found to contribute to measles immunity by boosting of the antibody level, and with less circulation of wild measles virus secondary vaccine failure may represent a special problem in terms of waning immunity, a problem which is probably more pronounced among those vaccinated early, but there are still few data relevant to this problem.