Everything. The adaptations your body has learned to fight other diseases are stored as T-cells. When you need more of that particular kind of thing, your body goes and runs off copies. Measles kills your T-cells, so your body can’t copy the old adaptations, only make blank-slate factory-new ones.
Wait, measles resets your immunity? Your immunity to what? Measles? Everything?
Everything. The adaptations your body has learned to fight other diseases are stored as T-cells. When you need more of that particular kind of thing, your body goes and runs off copies. Measles kills your T-cells, so your body can’t copy the old adaptations, only make blank-slate factory-new ones.
Holy shit. TIL. We should be good if we were vaccinated forever ago when we were kids, right?
Yes.
Thanks :)
TIL we found the factory reset button for the human immune system.
Here’s an article that describes the “immunity reset” aspect of measles: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211112-the-people-with-immune-amnesia
Recent research suggests it wipes a large portion of it.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/measles-immune-system-memory/