I just wrote about the myth about measles and cancer, but HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is pushing another similar myth — measles protects against heart disease. There is one published article that seems to support this claim, but it’s much more complicated — measles itself may actually increase the risk of heart disease.

This is the problem with people who cherry-pick evidence to support their claims — they ignore the other evidence that refutes or diminishes their claims. In this case, RFK Jr and his sycophants took one bad study to support their beliefs about the value of getting measles while ignoring the long list of complications from the disease.

Let’s take a look at this claim about measles protecting against heart disease.

Measles and heart disease

In a study published on 18 June 2015 in the journal Atherosclerosis, researchers examined self-reported survey responses from 103,836 people in Japan who were not vaccinated against measles between 1988 and 1990. They found that those individuals with a history of measles and mumps infections were found to have a lower risk of mortality from heart disease compared to those who did not have those infections.

The researchers theorized that this correlation could be explained by the hygiene hypothesis, a controversial claim that childhood exposure to pathogens, like measles, may boost the immune system. The researchers noted that the measles infection may strengthen the immune system by increasing the production of regulatory T cells that help control inflammation within artery walls, thus reducing the risk of heart disease.

Remember, this study may show correlation, but it does not show causation. We would need more studies to provide convincing evidence that measles has some protective effect against heart disease. However, respiratory viruses, such as measles, are known to harm the heart.

Multiple case reports, including a death, have reported rare but serious instances of measles-associated myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. Moreover, a 2023 study in China, published in the International Journal of General Medicine, examined more than 7,500 people and found that up to 43% of those infected with measles developed myocarditis. Furthermore, children under 12 are more likely to develop this complication.

This is not surprising since respiratory viruses can increase the risk of heart disease. For example, a 2018 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that individuals were 6X more likely to have a heart attack in the week after they contracted the flu.

It appears that respiratory infections may place a lot of strain on the heart because they often involve a subclinical pneumonia that is unnoticed by the patient.

Complications of measles

Even if measles protects against cardiovascular disease, that’s not the whole equation. Measles has risks that are far greater than the unproven protective effects against heart disease.

We have no evidence that measles helps prevent or lower the risk of cancer. However, according to the CDC, some of the many measles complications are:

• About 1-2 children out of 1000 who contract measles may develop subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a rare, chronic, progressive encephalitis that affects primarily children and young adults. SSPE is caused by a persistent infection of the measles virus. The disease starts with measles infection, usually before the age of 2 years, followed by approximately 6-15 asymptomatic years. Some researchers think the asymptomatic period is around 5-8 years after the initial disease. The disease gradually progresses with psychological and neurological deterioration, including personality changes, seizures, and coma. It is always ultimately fatal.
• Sadly, for every 1,000 children who get measles, 1 or 2 will die from it.
• About 30% of measles cases develop one or more complications.
• Pneumonia is most often the cause of death in young children.
• Ear infections occur in about 1 in 10 cases, and permanent loss of hearing can result.
• Diarrhea is reported in about 8% of cases.
• As many as 1 out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia.
• About 1 child in every 1,000 who gets measles will develop encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can lead to convulsions, deafness, and other long-term neurological deficits.
• A measles infection can result in short- and long-term immune system dysfunction, sometimes called immune amnesia, which can leave the child susceptible to other diseases early in life (which is in direct opposition to claims by anti-vaccine activists that it helps “boost” the immune system). Even if a child developed immunity to some disease before the measles infection, their immune system will “forget” that immunity, and the child will be susceptible to that infection again.

The risks of these complications are far greater than the possible (and unproven) reduction in risk of heart disease.

RFK Jr is ignoring all of the dangers of measles while promoting an unproven belief that measles may protect against heart disease. He just wants to believe that getting measles is a good thing, so he can ignore vaccines.

Citations

• FINKEL HE. MEASLES MYOCARDITIS. Am Heart J. 1964 May;67:679-83. doi: 10.1016/0002-8703(64)90339-4. PMID: 14156015.
• Frustaci A, Abdulla AK, Caldarulo M, Buffon A. Fatal measles myocarditis. Cardiologia. 1990 Apr;35(4):347-9. PMID: 2245437.
• Herdy GV, de Oliveira SA, Lopes VG. Miocardite por sarampo [Measles myocarditis]. Arq Bras Cardiol. 1982 Feb;38(2):115-7. Portuguese. PMID: 7159244.
• Kubota Y, Iso H, Tamakoshi A; JACC Study Group. Association of measles and mumps with cardiovascular disease: The Japan Collaborative Cohort (JACC) study. Atherosclerosis. 2015 Aug;241(2):682-6. doi: 10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2015.06.026. Epub 2015 Jun 18. PMID: 26122188.
• Kwong JC, Schwartz KL, Campitelli MA, Chung H, Crowcroft NS, Karnauchow T, Katz K, Ko DT, McGeer AJ, McNally D, Richardson DC, Rosella LC, Simor A, Smieja M, Zahariadis G, Gubbay JB. Acute Myocardial Infarction after Laboratory-Confirmed Influenza Infection. N Engl J Med. 2018 Jan 25;378(4):345-353. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1702090. PMID: 29365305.
• Susanto DF, Emilda, Risna. Measles-associated Myocarditis: A Case Report. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2024 Feb 1;43(2):e71. doi: 10.1097/INF.0000000000004159. Epub 2023 Nov 1. PMID: 38758208.
• Wang XY, Zhang XJ, Xia X, Chang SZ, Wu AZ. Epidemiological and Clinical Characteristics of Measles in Jinan, Shandong Province, China, from 1991 to 2022. Int J Gen Med. 2023 Jun 6;16:2305-2312. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S407121. PMID: 37304905; PMCID: PMC10257416.

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