as it resurges globally<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Some families may not know they can get their infant vaccinated before 12 months, or that they\u2019re traveling to areas where measles is circulating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds like (the San Francisco family) was doing what\u2019s normally recommended, but unfortunately we\u2019re not living in normal times anymore,\u201d said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Stanford.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Infants between 6 and 11 months old are especially vulnerable to measles because the antibodies they acquire from their mother\u2019s placenta during the pregnancy\u00a0\u2014 known as maternal antibodies\u00a0\u2014 protect them for roughly the first 6 months of life, but the antibodies tend to wane after that. And they\u2019re not yet old enough for the measles vaccine, which is recommended at 12 to 15 months old for the first dose and then at 4 to 6 years for the second dose. That\u2019s because if the vaccine is given earlier than 12 months, the maternal antibodies still circulating in the infant may prevent an optimal immune response to the vaccine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If your baby falls into that 6-to-11-month age range and you plan to travel internationally, health experts recommend you talk to your pediatrician about getting them an initial, \u201cextra\u201d dose of the vaccine before you go. In that case, the child should still get the \u201cnormal\u201d two-dose vaccine series later.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really in that 6-to 11-month window that babies will be at highest risk,\u201d said Dr. Daniele Gusland, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at UCSF. \u201cThat\u2019s why those babies, when they are going to be traveling internationally, are eligible for the extra dose. They are this uniquely at-risk group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The risk of an unvaccinated person contracting measles in another country depends on how prevalent measles is there. The World Health Organization maintains a list of countries with the highest rates of measles\u00a0\u2014 as of March, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Yemen, Lao People\u2019s Democratic Republic and Angola were at the top. But many other countries have measles circulating, including Mexico, which is at risk of losing its measles elimination status, and Canada, which lost its elimination status last year.<\/p>\n
The U.S., which declared measles eliminated in 2000, is also at risk of losing that status.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally, if they\u2019re traveling a lot of places, they\u2019ll be in international airports,\u201d Gusland said. \u201cIt\u2019s often a good idea to get that extra vaccine before international travel. But that risk-benefit discussion will vary depending on where they\u2019re traveling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Very young children are at highest risk of getting severely sick or dying from measles, and face a roughly 1 in 20 chance of needing hospitalization, Maldonado said. Some develop viral pneumonia, which is not treatable with drugs, and wind up on a ventilator.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not trivial,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
In rare cases, babies who get measles in their first year of life can develop severe progressive neurologic disease and lose all neurological function, which is almost always fatal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to go to an area you think there\u2019s measles, or traveling internationally regardless of where you\u2019re going, many of us recommend going ahead and getting the extra dose if your baby is 6 to 12 months of age,\u201d Maldonado said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cNow we\u2019re seeing outbreaks in the U.S. so you don\u2019t even have to travel internationally, you only need to travel to regions with outbreaks. There\u2019s 40 areas of the country that had measles last year. What I expect is we\u2019re going to see more cases, in all age groups, because we\u2019re just not vaccinating kids enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mobile clinic in Spartanburg, S.C., offers measles vaccinations during a February outbreak that sickened hundreds, part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[184,7,1570,101,103,102,104,106,105,2013],"class_list":{"0":"post-274115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news","17":"tag-us-and-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}