Skip to main content

Measles


You have probably been hearing a lot in the news lately regarding measles, for which there have been multiple outbreaks recently.  This is of course confusing considering several years ago we were on the verge of eradicating measles due to our high vaccination rates.  In the last several years there have been outbreaks in New York, Washington, Texas, Illinois, in California.  We actually just had our first report of it at Kaiser in San Jose and the person is in the intensive care unit and they are in the process of tracking down everyone who could've been exposed.

Many people don't understand how serious this is.  Our infectious disease specialists consider measles the most contagious disease out there.  Something like 90% of people who come in contact with the virus will become sick from it and it is airborne and can stay in the air for about an hour after somebody has put it into the air.  That is an extraordinarily contagious virus especially if you consider someone being sick in a large crowd or on a mass transit system.  This is part of the reason why there was an outbreak at Disneyland.

It usually takes 8-12 days after becoming exposed to start having symptoms and you can be contagious for 4 days before and after you have the typical measles rash, so this is very easy to catch from someone as they may not seem sick.  Most people also get a high fever as well as a cough and runny nose and pinkeye along with it when they do show symptoms.  Measles also has a high rate of more severe complications such as ear infections and diarrhea and life-threatening ones such as pneumonia and brain infection or encephalitis.  You do not want any part of any of this.

Like most vaccinations though, the people who benefit most from you getting the vaccination are not necessarily you.  The goal is to keep you from transmitting these contagious things to people with weakened immune systems such as those with medical conditions, the elderly, people undergoing cancer treatments and also pregnant women, who can have devastating complications both to the mother and baby if they catch measles.

The CDC considers all adults born before 1957 to have a natural immunity due to probably being exposed to it as a child.  Many other people received childhood vaccinations and have immunity as well.  Staying up-to-date on your immunity status and her vaccinations are the most important thing to help keep you and everyone else safe from this condition.  Typically if you do not know if you had the vaccinations as a kid, we can check your blood titers to see if you have it.  We can also just give you a booster of the MMR vaccine.

If you are interested in getting tested to see if you have immunity or in getting the vaccinations, please let me know.  You can learn much much more on the CDC website as well.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Multivitamins

If you can get the lid off, you probably don't need them When I ask people if they are taking any vitamins, herbs or supplements, many people will say they are taking a multivitamin.  When I ask them why they take it, I get a quizzical look most of the time. I think this is something that resonates from childhood and parental advice of the idea that we need vitamins to help our body develop.  I'm not pediatrician so I can't speak to the effects on the developing child, but I will say that most non-pregnant adults without major medical conditions do not need extra vitamins. You'll be impressed by these labels promising 120%, 300%, 1200% of your daily dose of vitamin whatever it is, but the truth is that for most of these vitamins, if you take more than your daily dose your body needs, the rest just ends up in your urine.  You are literally peeing money away in this case. There's been a new trendy vitamin every decade or so for the last 40-50 years; First it...
Read more

Kidney Stones

I've written about this previously , but it's often hard to explain to people what a 10 is on the "1-10" pain scale if they haven't been in that spot before.  For women who have had children, they generally know what a 10 is, but for men it's a little harder.  When I was a medical student on my psychiatry rotation, we had a patient calmly sitting there saying his pain level was at a 10 and our resident, who was an ex-military sniper with a large skull tattoo on his forearm and a crosshair through the eye, calmly leaned forward and asked, "so if I lit you on fire and ran you over with my truck, you could not be in more pain than you are now, correct?"  The patient changed his answer. Getting to the point, a kidney stone is about the close I can come to describing a 10/10 pain to people who haven't gone through childbirth.  The fundamental issue is similar - your body is trying to move a big solid thing through an opening that was not really desig...
Read more

NSAIDs

Advil and Motrin are ibuprofen, then you have Aleve (naproxen).  Those are the over-the-counter ones.  Prescriptions are Mobic (meloxicam), nabumetone, indomethacin, Toradol (ketorolac), diclofenac, Lodine, and the list goes on.  All of these medications are in a class called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). I'm giving you this list because there is mounting evidence that these medications a) don't work as well as we'd thought and b) have some very serious long term side effects we're finding out more about. NSAID's act by reducing the amount of prostaglandins you make in order to reduce inflammation.  However, prostaglandins have a ton of other effects and are involved in the maintenance of just about AIDs and also stronger if they are taken every day and/or around-the-clock.  every other organ system that you have.  The effect is stronger with higher doses of NS NSAID's work best and are best indicated for times when something is r...
Read more