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

Play

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #38 (63 MB .mp3, 91 minutes)

Links for this episode:

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

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

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.