Measles virus is found in boy's brain after MMR

Measles virus is found in boy's brain after MMR
By Lorraine Fraser, Medical Correspondent
(Filed: 06/10/2002)

Telegraph News

A child who developed severe epilepsy after receiving the MMR jab has been found to have measles virus from the vaccine in his brain.

The results of tests conducted recently have been revealed by the 13-year-old boy's mother. She says that she has decided to go public in order to push the Government to take the plight of children allegedly damaged by the three-in-one measles, mumps and rubella vaccination more seriously.

Scientists say that the implications of the discovery are difficult to assess without further research. However, it raises new questions about the triple inoculation, which has been dogged by controversy since Andrew Wakefield, a former consultant at the Royal Free Hospital in London, linked it with a new syndrome of bowel disease and autism in children.

The boy's mother, who has asked to remain anonymous, told The Telegraph yesterday that her son had developed an allergic rash eight days after he received the MMR vaccination when he was 15 months old. He then progressed to have 10 to 12 seizures every month.

In the summer of 1998, however, he descended into "status epilepticus" - continuous convulsions - and surgeons at a London hospital decided that he needed emergency brain surgery to save his life. It was at this point that a brain biopsy was taken.

The woman, who is suing the manufacturers of the MMR vaccine on behalf of her son, declined to say where the biopsy had been tested for the measles virus but indicated that this had been done in a reputable laboratory.

She had been shocked to receive the test results indicating that vaccine-strain measles virus had been found, she said. She had also learnt that samples from her son's bowel, taken in 1997 because he had digestive problems, had tested positive for vaccine-strain virus.

After the operation when he was nine, her son had had to relearn "virtually everything", she said. His personality changed and he was no longer able to attend mainstream school, although he had very recently been free of seizures.

"Now with this new information I am very concerned," the boy's mother said. "Is it over for him or not? No one knows and this is why all these children - not just my son - need to be acknowledged rather than have the continuous stream of blanket denials that have been issued by the Department of Health."

British specialists investigating MMR were reluctant to comment publicly on the case last night. One cautioned that it was theoretically possible that the boy had developed a vaccine-related condition that was more commonly caused by a natural measles virus infection.

If this was the case, he said, then MMR would actually help to protect the wider population from similar infections. However, he added: "We do not know what this result means."

The Department of Health has told parents they have no need to be concerned about MMR - a position supported by leading medical bodies worldwide.

• 15 May 2002: Blanket assurance on MMR 'a mistake'
• 21 January 2001: MMR doctor links 170 cases of autism to vaccine

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