Reuters Health – Early measles infection may increase the risk of
developing Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, according to researchers
from the Mayo Clinic.

The report is the latest in a series of reports over the last few
years, previously reported by Reuters Health, which have either bolstered or
questioned the link between measles infection and inflammatory bowel
disease.

Dr. Darrell S. Pardi and colleagues from the Rochester,
Minnesota-based institution, describe their study in the June issue of The
American Journal of Gastroenterology. They suggest that the idea that the
measles virus can cause inflammatory bowel disease is “biologically
plausible”, given that the virus can infect and persist in endothelial cells
in the gastrointestinal tract and cause an immune response with giant cell
formation.

In the study, they identified individuals who had been diagnosed with
measles before the age of 5 years from 1950 to 1966 through the Mayo Clinic
and the Rochester Epidemiology Project. Of this initial group of 1,164
eligible cases, 662 completed a questionnaire to determine if the patient
had subsequently developed Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, or
symptoms of undiagnosed disease.

Overall, the researchers found six cases of Crohn’s disease and six
cases of ulcerative colitis that could be confirmed by the patients’
physicians. Based on the incidence of cases in Olmsted County, Minnesota,
they would have expected significantly fewer cases: 1.9 for Crohn’s disease
and 2.0 for ulcerative colitis.

Seventy-five percent of the cases had measles before the age of 2
years, the authors note, but this did not reach statistical significance.
Noting that others have found no difference in the rate of measles
infection in those diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, Dr. Pardi and
colleagues suggest that “infection before the development of full
immunological competence may lead to viral persistence.” They also suggest
that other factors, such as infection with mumps virus, may contribute to
the development of inflammatory bowel disease.

The investigators also emphasized that their study did not consider
the effect of measles vaccination, and “unless more compelling data become
available to implicate measles vaccine as a risk factor for inflammatory
bowel disease, we fully support the current recommendation for universal
vaccination against measles.”