A live measles virus vaccine was prepared with a virus strain attenuated by passage in the primary sheep kidney cell culture. All of 209 initially seronegative children showed seroconversion after subcutaneous inoculation of one dose of the vaccine. The geometric mean of neutralizing antibody titers following vaccination was 26.6. Axillary temperature of 37.5 C or higher was recorded in 23.6% of 199 vaccinees with adequate clinical records, but only 4% had fever over 39.0 C. The average maximal temperature in feverish children was 38.3 C. Fever usually lasted for only one or two days. Neither febrile convulsion nor other toxic reactions was observed.Measles virus was first isolated in cultures of human and monkey renal cells by Enders and Peebles (1954) [3]. Live attenuated Edmonston B measles virus vaccine, the first efficacious preparation as such, was developed by Enders and his associates [2].In Japan, two types of live vaccine were developed by attenuating the virus by passage in chick embryo [12] or calf kidney cell culture [10]. Results of human vaccination with these Japanese vaccines were comparable to those obtained with Enders' vaccine [6]. A series of field trials indicated that administration of a prior dose of killed virus vaccine helped reduce considerably undue clinical reactions at the time of inoculation of these vaccines without causing marked decrease in antibody response [7].Further attenuated virus strains were established by passage of the virus in cell cultures of the chick embryo [4,5,13,16,18]

No abstract