I've got questions about measles disease. Is this the place?

[wallacesmum]

To get into a discussion about health and measles? Or is the discussion a different subforum? Because, while I am totally comfortable with my decision regarding vaccines given my current level of knowledge, I still have a lot of questions related to this disease.

[Spy]

This is the place now. :D Vaccine diseases is the place for the diseases. As opposed to the Vaccines that discusses actual vaccines. So since you want to talk about measles (as opposed to MMR vaccine or a component), fire away. :)

[wallacesmum]

Right, I see. duh. Okay.

What I am interested in right now is the relationship between vitamin A and measles. I have found some scattered discussions of co-administration of the vaccine with vit. A, but I haven't found anything broad or consistent with the assertions I have read of "widespread co-administration by WHO."

Beyond that, I want to know more about the actual biological factors at play. Since, as with pertussis and vit. C, the real issue is why it DOES work, if it does work, rather than how many studies have been done to confirm this. If the biology makes sense, as it does with pertussis and C, that seems like a good place to start. So I am looking for some related resources.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Okay, I'll come back to that later. There is some stuff on mechanisms in my files, but I'll have to find it.

[cartersmom]

I would also like to know if one administeres Vitamin A for measles, what about dosage?? How much should you give? Is it based on age/weight. Is there any doasge guidelines specific to measles posted anywhere??

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

The only guidelines ever posted in the medical literature, were the guidelines for third world countries where children are seriously deficient. IMO they don't apply to Western countries. What I did was buy CLO in capsules, and the children would take three. Photophobia usually takes about 20 - 30 minutes to disappear, and I would tell them that when they got sensitive to the light again, they should take some more.

From memory the oldest child took about 9 a day for about two days, and the youngest about 16 a day for three days.

Everyone is different. Our youngest has always needed a lot of vitamin A, because his immune system is very much like mine.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I will check in the USA articles which I have, to see what they say, because I can't remember. But I do know that it's now standard hospital policy for any child admitted to hospital with measles to receive Vitamin A. I'll try to find out what the New Zealand doses are....

[wallacesmum]

Do you know anything about vitamin transmission in breast milk? I don't worry much about getting the CLO (or SA) into ds because he nurses so much, but I don't actually know how much passes through and I can only take as much as my body will hold, which is the problem with oral dosage in general.

[Spy]

Vitamins in breastmilk directly depend on mothers intake. Minerals don't. For Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), it reaches maximum concentration in milk in 3 hours, for A (retinol) in 5 hours, both have 100% bioavailability.