Journal of Tropical Pediatrics Advance Access originally published online on December 15, 2004
Journal of Tropical Pediatrics 2005 51(1):45-48; doi:10.1093/tropej/fmh073
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Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Vol. 51, No. 1 © Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved
Passive Immunity to Measles in the Breastmilk and Cord Blood of Some Nigerian Subjects
1 Department of Virology, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, 2 Department of Immunology, WHO Collaborating Center for Measles, National Laboratorie de Sante, Luxembourg
Maternal and cord blood collected from 33 Nigerian motherchild pairs were tested for measlessepcific IgG. All 33 had protective measles antibodies at the time of delivery with a positive correlation of r = 0.87. Determination of the rate of waning of these antibodies revealed that 58 per cent of these children had lost the protective maternal antibody by the age of 4 months and only 3 per cent of the children had enough antibody to protect them between the ages of 69 months. Fifty-five colostrum samples from the same mothers and 347 breastmilk samples collected at various periods of breastfeeding also showed that anti-measles IgA had dropped below the protective cut-off within the first 2 weeks of birth. It is evident that the Nigerian child is born with solid anti-measles antibody but the rate of waning has left a large number unprotected before the first dose of the vaccine. There is an urgent need to review the measles vaccination programme in Nigeria to protect these susceptible infants.
* Correspondence: F. D. Adu, Department of Virology College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, UCH, Ibadan, Nigeria. E-mail
ibadan-lab{at}who-nigeria.org
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