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Measles: The race to understand 'immune amnesia'

Scientists have known for years that measles can alter the immune system – but the latest evidence suggests it's less of a mild tweaking, and more of a total reset.

"In a way, infection of the measles virus basically sets the immune system to default mode," says Mansour Haeryfar, a professor of immunology at Western University, Canada, "as if it has never encountered any microbes in the past". Measles is an ancient respiratory virus, transmitted via aerosols and droplets, that's thought to have first made the leap from cattle to humans around 2,500 years ago – possibly taking advantage of the crammed cities that were springing up across the globe. "It was really quite a surprise if you compare it to what we knew at that time from the textbooks of how measles virus would enter our host," says Rik de Swart, an associate professor of Viroscience at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

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