Medicine: Campus Ills: Measles strikes U.S. colleges

At a big-time hockey school like Boston University, it is not unusual for 3,500 rabid fans to show up at a varsity ice hockey game. But last week the B.U. Terriers played the University of Lowell (Mass.) Chiefs before a meager crowd of 28 reporters and college officials. The reason: rubeola, or measles. Because the disease had already struck 55 undergraduates, university officials & barred students from attending all sporting events. They also canceled plays and lectures to prevent further spread of the contagion.

B.U. was not the only university battling the rubeola virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, students have been stricken at Oberlin College in Ohio, Ohio State and the University of Michigan. Worst hit of all was Principia College of Elsah, Ill., a tiny Christian Science-affiliated school where at least 96 students have been infected and two have died, apparently from complications. (Rubeola, which tends to be more serious in adults than in children, can lead to pneumonia and encephalitis.)

Measles on campus is no coincidence, says CDC Epidemiologist John Frank. Most children under college age have been immunized against the disease, and most adults have a natural immunity because they were exposed in their childhood, when measles epidemics were common. But people born between 1957 and 1967, which includes today’s college students, are uniquely vulnerable. That was the decade when the measles vaccine was introduced and the incidence of the disease was dropping sharply. Thus during this period most children were not exposed to measles and did not acquire natural immunity. Some were never vaccinated, and those who were may have received an early version of the vaccine that was not always effective. Furthermore, in those days children often received the vaccine before age one, when it is less certain to work. For these reasons, the CDC estimates that between 5% and 15% of college students are susceptible to measles.

Some state health officials and certain colleges have resolved the campus measles problem by requiring all matriculating students to show proof of immunization. Since the outbreak, Principia has begun a vaccination program, but only on a voluntary basis, since Christian Science teachings reject such medical measures. State authorities meanwhile clamped a quarantine on the school, confining all students to campus until the epidemic ends. At Boston University, as students departed last week for their spring-break idylls, they were instructed by school officials not to return without certificates of immunization.