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Response to Comment on "Long-term measles-induced immunomodulation increases overall childhood infectious disease mortality"

Science. 2019 Jul 12;365(6449):eaax6498. doi: 10.1126/science.aax6498.

Abstract

Thakkar and McCarthy suggest that periodicity in measles incidence artifactually drives our estimates of a 2- to 3-year duration of measles "immune-amnesia." We show that periodicity has a negligible effect relative to the immunological signal we detect, and demonstrate that immune-amnesia is largely undetectable in small populations with large fluctuations in mortality of the type they use for illustration.

Publication types

  • Comment

MeSH terms

  • Child
  • Communicable Diseases*
  • Humans
  • Immunomodulation
  • Incidence
  • Measles*