Measles Virus ‘Cooperates’ With Itself to Cause Fatal Encephalitis - Neuroscience News

The World Health Organization estimates that nearly nine million people worldwide were infected with measles in 2021, with the number of deaths reaching 128,000.

“Despite its availability, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has set back vaccinations, especially in the Global South,” explains Yuta Shirogane, Assistant Professor at Kyushu University’s Faculty of Medical Sciences.

“Therefore, in patients with SSPE, the measles virus must have remained in their body and mutated, then gained the ability to infect nerve cells.

In the team’s previous studies, they showed that certain mutations in the F protein puts it in a ‘hyperfusongenic’ state, allowing it to fuse onto neural synapses and infect the brain.

In their latest study, the team analyzed the genome of the measles virus from SSPE patients and found that various mutations had accumulated in their F protein.

These findings advance the understanding of the long-term process of MeV neuropathogenicity and provide critical insight into the genotype-phenotype relationships of en bloc transmitted viruses.