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Can you get
measles as a grown up if you had measles as a kid? Also, does a vaccine
when you were a kid still protect you later in life? Kristin, Palm Beach
Gardens, Florida
Measles has been in the news a lot lately. As of Friday, there have been 45 cases reported
in 17 states so far this year. For comparison, in 2023 there were 58
cases in the entire year. That uptick is concerning enough that the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised doctors and other
healthcare providers on January 25 to be on alert for measles cases.
“Most
of the measles cases involved in these outbreaks are children and
adolescents who had not received a measles vaccination,” says Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at University of Illinois Chicago.
Declining vaccination rates are the reason measles has had such a resurgence in recent decades. Measles was considered to be eliminated from the US in the year 2000. But in 2019, there were more than 1,200 cases, the biggest reported case load since 1992. It’s an extremely contagious
virus. If one person has it, says Wallace, as many as 9 out of 10
people around them will wind up infected if they aren’t vaccinated.
That’s why containing the spread of measles requires a very high
vaccination rate, about 95%. And according to a CDC report from November, kindergarten immunization rates have dropped nationally to 93%. Misinformation
about the MMR vaccine, which includes the measles, has proliferated in
the last two decades, fueled further by vaccination concerns that arose
during the pandemic. (I have a podcast episode on that topic you can
listen to here.)
But, says Wallace, adults are sufficiently protected from the measles if one of these four things applies to you: - You had measles at some point in your life.
- You were born before 1957.
- You’ve
had two doses of a measles-containing vaccine if you spend time in a
high-risk setting for transmission, like schools or hospitals.
- You’ve had one dose of a vaccine if you don’t spend time in high-risk settings.
Kids and teens need one or two doses for protection depending on their age. If you aren’t sure whether you’ve been vaccinated or had the measles, you can get what’s called an MMR titer test, which is available commercially at various labs for about $129, Wallace advises.
Measles, she says, can cause severe complications and hospitalization. In November 2022, for example, there was an outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, among primarily unvaccinated children.
“It is never too late to get children vaccinated or catch up on missed doses,” says Wallace. “Or adults for that matter.” — Kristen V. Brown | 
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