Measles
Tuesday 9 December 2008
What are the measles and what happens if you get them?
What is measles?
Measles is a contagious disease caused by a virus and spread by contact with an infected person’s fluid – from their nose, mouth, or through germs in the air. You can even catch measles by drinking out of the same glass as someone carrying the virus.
It’s so contagious that there’s around a 90 per cent chance you’ll catch it if you’re in the presence of an infected person.
You can get measles at any age, but it's most common in kids aged between one and four.
What are the symptoms?
It takes about two weeks from the time you get measles until you start getting sick. This is called the incubation period.
Symptoms can vary between people. A common one is a four day fever where you may suffer from a cough, a runny nose and an eye infection called conjunctivitis. You might also find that bright lights hurt your eyes too.
Another common symptom is getting a rash all over your body, but you might not notice it until after a few days of infection. It begins on your head and the spots are extremely itchy - but be careful, if you scratch them you could scar!
Small red spots inside the mouth also appear just before the rash does. The rash itself usually lasts for about six days.
Treament
The rash you get with measles really stands out, so it’s quite easy to tell if you have it. Your GP will be able to give you final confirmation.
There is no treatment for measles – you have to let it run its course, but drinking lots of fluid is important as is just resting.
You are infectious four days before you start getting a rash until five days after it goes away, so you will have to stay indoors for a while.
Most young people recover really easily. Also once you’ve had measles, you can never get it again!
MMR
Measles used to be common until vaccination made it much more rare. Recently however, there has been a large increase in the number of measles cases. In England and Wales, measles cases increased in the first ten months of 2008 to 1,049, more cases than the whole of 2007.
This has been linked to the fact that fewer children are receiving the MMR - the Mumps Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. The vaccine protects against measles, mumps and rubella, also known as the German measles. The vaccine contains a weaker version of these viruses that works to boost the body's ability to fight these viruses off..
MMR is given to children at 13 months, and then a second dose is given at the age of three years and four months. Two doses are needed because children sometimes don’t respond to the first one – meaning they are in danger of getting measles when they are older.
