Prevalence of measles antibodies in patients with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis in Poland in the years 1971--1978

Abstract

Between 1971 and 1978, clinical centres in four provinces of Poland reported 107 cases of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). This series comprised 73.8% boys and 26.2% girls. Most children were aged 6--8 years, and 66% of them had had measles in the first two years of life. As compared with a control group the geometric means of the haemagglutination-inhibiting antibodies and neutralizing antibodies were between ten and twenty times higher in SSPE patients. Determinations of the levels of antibodies carried out several times during the disease showed a rise of the titres to values as high as 1 : 128,000 in the serum and 1 : 1,024 in the cerebrospinal fluid in some cases.