TWiV 38: Measles

June 28, 2009

child-with-measlesHosts: Vincent Racaniello and Glenn Rall

Vincent and Glenn Rall chat about koi herpesvirus, H1N1 influenza vaccine produced in insect cells, attack by a rabid raccoon, and measles.

Sponsor:  Try GotoMyPC free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit www.gotomypc.com/podcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Links for this episode:
Virus suspected in carp die-off: koi herpesvirus
H1N1 influenza vaccine produced in insect cells with baculovirus vectors
Outbreak of measles in Wales
Production of influenza vaccines in cell cultures: MDCK, Vero, PER.C6, EB66, insect (thanks Peter!)

Weekly Science Picks
Glenn Riddled with Life by Marlene Zuk
Vincent All the Virology on the WWW

Send your virology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twiv@twiv.tv or leave voicemail at Skype: twivpodcast

Download TWiV #38 (63 MB .mp3, 91 minutes)

Subscribe to TWiV in iTunes, by the RSS feed, or by email

Share this episode:
  • TwitThis
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • StumbleUpon

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Diane
    Hi Professor, I am slowly but surely making my way through all the past twivs. I don't want to miss anything! So you and Glenn Rall were talking about how immunosuppression by measles is actually "just" inhibitionn of IL-12. So are people who are immunosuppressed (temporarily) by measles virus just immunosuppressed to viruses or are they also immunsuppressed in regards to bacteria also? Since the measles virus inhibits IL-12, it sounds like then Helper T2 cells are made which would still fight bacteria. I found this episode to be completely fascinating. Which is saying something, because I like all the twivs!
  • Glenn Rall
    Hi Diane!

    Thanks for your interest in the measles TWiV. If I said "just", that was certainly a mis-statement, since immunosuppression caused by viruses is a complex, and likely multifactorial, process. However, your point is a good one: presumably loss of IL-12 would skew toward a Th2 profile, which you would think would be helpful against bacteria and parasites. But remember that T and B cells are highly specific, so it's likely that the "skewing" only affects the measles specific T cells, not all T cells. Even so, why would MV-infected people be more susceptible to bacteria and parasites? To my knowledge, we don't yet have an answer for this, but as I mentioned, this is a really active field, and a number of other strong hypotheses are being tested that might provide some clues as to how a MV infection might influence the efficiency of the entire host response.
blog comments powered by Disqus