On natural measles disease is necessary to make some brief considerations:

1. Measles is a disease contagious acute with very good prognosis .

2. It is true that some are possible complications , both lungs, both neurologic, and hematologic, but they usually attack the weakest, ie more immunosuppressed.

3. The natural measles disease provides protection that lasts a lifetime and that is greater than that offered by the vaccine.

4. Women who have had the natural disease, during pregnancy transmit to his son a specific antibody delivery that will protect it for a long time (maternal antibodies fall gradually with increasing age from 7 to 15 months postpartum).

5.   The incidence of this disease began to decline long before the measles vaccination and this means that measles is, like all infectious diseases, strongly influenced by the hygienic, social, cultural and naturally immune subjects exposed to the virus.

6.   Currently in Italy are registered about 500 cases of spontaneous measles and the vast majority of these take place both in unvaccinated subjects, both in the 5% of those who received the vaccine but did not respond with an appropriate increase in antibody titer. The reports of measles in vaccinated subjects and protected by a high antibody titer and this is rare but not impossible also can occur even in those who received two injections of the vaccine.

7.   Mortality from natural measles is very decreased in recent years (since the middle of the decade of 1980) and mainly affects people over 14-15 years (in the last decade even over 20-25 years). Since the death of encephalitis is 5%, the natural measles can cause fatal complication 1 per 10,000 patients (these statistics are, however, about 30 years ago, because they lack updated data). In other industrialized countries, the lethality is very low and mainly concerns the elderly over 60 years, while in African countries the lethality is higher tremendously and mainly affects children because of their poor nutritional status, hygiene, social and educational.

8. SSPE ( subacute sclerosing panencephalitis ) is a rare infectious disease of the central nervous system due to the persistence of the viral genome (ipermutato and adapted to the human environment) within the genome of brain nerve cells. After several years, the genome is reactivated and causes a neurodegenerative, fatal in 100% of cases .. It occurs usually after 1-27 years from measles and occurs with an incidence of approximately 6-7 cases per million infected, ie 1 case per 150,000 patients.