TY - JOUR
T1 - Passive immunity to measles in the breastmilk and cord blood of some Nigerian subjects
AU - Oluseyi Oyedele, O.
AU - Odemuyiwa, S. O.
AU - Ammerlaan, W.
AU - Muller, C. P.
AU - Adu, F. D.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was done by Mrs Oyedele Oluseyi in partial fulfillment of her PhD thesis of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and was supported by fund provided by the Laboratorie Nationale de Sante, Luxembourg where she spent a year on the project. We appreciate the assistance of all personnel in the various hospitals who made the collection of the samples possible. We also thank all the mothers who donated colostrum, breastmilk, and cord blood from their newborns. Correspondence: F. D. Adu, Department of Virology College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, UCH, Ibadan, Nigeria. E-mail <[email protected]>.
PY - 2005/2
Y1 - 2005/2
N2 - Maternal and cord blood collected from 33 Nigerian mother-child pairs were tested for measles-sepcific 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 6-9 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.
AB - Maternal and cord blood collected from 33 Nigerian mother-child pairs were tested for measles-sepcific 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 6-9 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=15444372354&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/tropej/fmh073
DO - 10.1093/tropej/fmh073
M3 - Review article
C2 - 15601649
AN - SCOPUS:15444372354
SN - 0142-6338
VL - 51
SP - 45
EP - 48
JO - Journal of Tropical Pediatrics
JF - Journal of Tropical Pediatrics
IS - 1
ER -