Difficulties in clinical diagnosis of measles: proposal for modified clinical case definition

Laboratory investigations are indispensable to monitor the progress of measles elimination—results of the German Measles Sentinel 1999–2003

“…Other infectious agents like rubella or parvovirus B19 cause rash fever illnesses with clinical pictures sometimes similar to measles. Also adenovirus, enterovirus and human herpes virus 6 are agents that must be considered (Davidkin et al, 1998;Ferson et al, 1995;Nur et al, 1999;Tait et al, 1996). These trends of the vaccination era underlines an increasing necessity of laboratory investigations for confirmation of suspected cases on the path to the elimination of measles.…”

Current status of measles in the Republic of Korea: an overview of case-based and seroepidemiological surveillance scheme

“…With the low incidence of measles in Korea, suspecting the disease and making a clear diagnosis in patients with morbilliform rash is more difficult than it was 15 years ago, because recently trained pediatricians have had fewer opportunities to observe measles patients during their training periods. Therefore, the clinical diagnosis of measles has become unreliable in the postelimination era in Korea, as has been the case in other countries23). Moreover, understanding the magnitude of vaccine-modified measles is important because high vaccination coverage may result in disease burden in patients with primary or secondary vaccine failure.…”

Remaining measles challenges in Australia

“…Cough and presence of fever at the time of rash onset are important features that increase the specificity of a diagnosis of measles in a patient with rash and fever 14 . A recent study in Victoria found that confirmed sporadic measles cases were more likely to report fever at rash onset, cough, conjunctivitis, and year of birth between 1968 and 1981 15 …”

“…High‐risk contacts who are most likely to benefit are individuals who are severely immunocompromised, pregnant women with negative results for measles IgG, and children between 6 and 9 months of age. For infants less than 6 months of age, NHIG administration should be considered if their mother has been diagnosed with measles or is seronegative 24 . It is recommended that MMR should not be administered until at least 3 months after administration of NHIG, because of potential interference with the live vaccine.…”