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Common Symptoms and Damages of Measles Essay

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The Latin name for measles is rubeola. The pathogen which causes the disease is a paramyxovirus, which is one of a group of RNA (ribonucleic acid) viruses. Measles is a respiratory disease caused by a virus, and also comes out in a rash. The virus enters the body via the respiratory system, and grows in the cells at the back of the throat and in the cells that line the lungs, from there it then enters the blood stream and circulates the body.

Common Symptoms
Usually a person doesn’t start to get symptoms of measles until they have been infected with the virus for 7-11 days. The symptoms are:
• Runny nose
• Dry hacking cough
• Sore throat – lymph nodes swell
• Sneezing
• Fever – this can be mild or severe and can reach 105Fº …show more content…

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The symptoms usually last about 2 weeks in all.

Rare Symptoms
There are more serious symptoms of having mumps, but although these are more severe they are also a lot less common.
The rare or uncommon symptoms include:
• Encephalitis- inflammation of the brain
• Inflammation of the nervous system
• Infection of the middle ear
• A very high fever
• Severe headache
• Breathing difficulty

Long term damage & disabilities
It is very important to immunise against this disease not only because it is a very contagious virus but because it can have some very serious long term effects.
The most serious of these is obviously death, and people can and do die from measles; there are 1 million deaths worldwide caused by measles.
Also measles can cause deafness because of the inner ear infection.
Another long term damage of measles could be SSPE (Subacute Sclerosing Panencaphilitis). This can occur 2 to 10 years after contracting the measles virus, this results in progressive neurological deterioration because of brain inflammation.

Common side effects of the vaccine
Although it is very important to immunise against this disease, the vaccine does have side-effects, and no vaccine is completely safe. The Measles vaccine is given as part of the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella. The common and less severe side effects are; fever; mild rash; temporary pain or stiffness of joints,

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