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The immunological efficacy and the absence of communicability of live attenuated measles-virus vaccine in children has been described by Katz and Enders1 and by others2-10 Since immunity to natural measles infection shortly after vaccination has also been reported,3,4 the final acceptance of this vaccine for routine pediatric immunization will presumably depend on the persistence of the immunity conferred and on the severity of reactions to the vaccination.The main purpose of the study undertaken here has been to gain further information regarding the reactions caused by a subcutaneously inoculated attenuated measles-virus vaccine prepared from the chick-embryo-adapted Edmonston strain in institutionalized children and the effect of γ-globulin on such reactions. In addition, the serological response to vaccination was tested by complement fixation (CF) and hemagglutination inhibition (HI) techniques. The full report of this study will be published elsewhere.11 MATERIAL AND METHODS Design and Operation of Study.—The

Summary Two serological techniques previously developed in our laboratories, platelet aggregation (PA) and gel precipitation (GP), are introduced as methods for detecting measles antibodies in patients with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). In PA tests of 11 SSPE patients high serum titers and moderate cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) titers were found. In GP tests all the sera formed 3 to 6 lines and CSF 1 to 2 lines against measles antigens. In 6 out of 50 post-measles sera positive PA reactions were found and only weak GP reactions with 1 to 3 lines were seen in tests on 37 sera studied.

Clinical and laboratory data on 20 cases of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) diagnosed in Finland in the years 1960–1969 are reported. The patients had measles at an early age. Of the 14 patients whose age on contracting measles is known, nine had it before two years of age. The academic performance of six out of the eleven children attending school was exceedingly poor several years before the onset of typical symptoms of SSPE. This may be an early sign of the disease. All sera of the eleven patients with SSPE studied had moderate or high titers of both complement-fixing (CF) and platelet-aggregating (PA) antibodies to measles virus. In the 45 “normal” postmeasles sera serving as controls, this correlation between the CF and PA tests was practically nonexistent. Despite positive CF reactions in 43 of the 45 control sera, only six were positive in the PA test, and even in these the titers were low. In the gel-precipitation tests with measles-virus antigen, sera from patients with SSPE gave three to six strong precipitation lines and the cerebrospinal fluids, one to two lines. About 50% of the controls who had had measles developed precipitating antibodies in their sera; the highest number of lines was two.