Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Scientists dubbed the startling findings “immune amnesia.” The body can rebuild those defenses — but it could take years. And with measles on the rise, “it should be a scary phenomenon,” said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard’s school of public health, lead author of research published Thursday in the journal Science. “This goes under the radar” because doctors wouldn’t necessarily connect a child’s pneumonia to measles they suffered a year earlier, Mina explained. “But would they have gotten it if they hadn’t gotten measles?” The Harvard team analyzed blood samples taken from 77 children before and after a measles outbreak in an unvaccinated community in the Netherlands. They looked for antibodies, which remember viruses and bacteria they encounter to guard against a repeat infection. After recovering from measles, the youngsters were left with plenty of antibodies against that virus — but ones they’d previously harbored against other germs had plummeted. In the most severe cases, “they’re just as vulnerable as if they were infants,” said study senior author Stephen Elledge, a Harvard geneticist. Elledge is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports AP’s Health & Science Department. A separate study, published Thursday in Science Immunology, supported the findings. Researchers from Britain’s Wellcome Sanger Institute used the Dutch blood samples to genetically test antibody-producing cells, and concluded measles is eliminating enough to re-set the immune system to a baby-like state. If protection against the misery — and sometimes life-threatening effects — of measles isn’t enough reason to vaccinate children, specialists said the two studies offer a powerful new rationale. “There really are profound gaps and holes” in someone’s immunity after measles, said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which helped fund the Harvard work. “You ultimately recover but after a year or two or sometimes more.” “It’s doubly important to vaccinate children,” agreed Dr. Mark Mulligan of NYU Langone Health, who wasn’t involved with the new research. “It’s a vaccine that protects against the specific target, measles virus, but also against immune suppression.” Measles is one of the world’s most contagious viruses, able to spread through coughs and sneezes for four days before someone develops the characteristic rash. It sometimes leaves children with brain damage or hearing loss, and while deaths are rare in the U.S., measles killed 110,000 people globally in 2017. The vaccine offers powerful protection but a lack of access means measles remains rampant in many lower-income countries. Even the U.S., where most children are immunized, has seen a resurgence fueled by outbreaks in unvaccinated communities that in turn threaten people too young or sick to be immunized. So far this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has counted more than 1,200 U.S. measles cases, the most since 1992. Doctors have long known that people temporarily experience weakened immunity after measles. Using decades of health records, Mina previously reported that child deaths from other infections jumped after a measles outbreak, increases that lasted two or three years. But no one knew why, until the new study. The Dutch children started out pretty healthy: Technology developed in Elledge’s lab found antibodies in their blood against typical childhood germs. But two months after recovering from measles, the children had lost on average 20 percent of their usual antibody mix. Some lost up to 70 percent of protection against specific bugs, limiting their ability to respond if they encounter that germ again. Importantly, researchers didn’t find loss of antibodies in “control” populations that didn’t get infected with measles — or in children after they received the measles vaccine. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Measles saps kids’ ability to fight other germs.

Health officials will conduct tests to determine whether the latest case is related to the previous seven that have been identified since March. Officials at the New Jersey school could not provide the current health status of the student. The latest case comes shortly after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed the university to use an imported vaccine to help control the disease’s spread. The past cases at the Ivy League school were caused by the meningococcal bacteria known as serogroup B. State law requires all Princeton students living in dormitories to receive a meningitis vaccine that protects against most strains but not the serogroup B variety, Princeton spokesman Martin Mbugua said in an email. The outbreak of serogroup B meningitis is rare but not the first of its kind in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Bexsero, made by Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG, will be provided to all undergraduate students, graduate students who live in university housing on or off campus, and students and faculty with certain illnesses, such as sickle cell disease, Princeton officials said earlier this week. The FDA has allowed the use of the vaccine at Princeton under an Investigational New Drug application. The federal CDC considers the drug to be safe. “Everyone involved is working hard to organize a potential serogroup B meningococcal disease vaccine campaign as quickly as possible that fits into Princeton University’s academic calendar,” said CDC spokeswoman Sharon Hoskins. The Princeton inoculation campaign is set to be voluntary for students and is expected to begin in early December, with another event in February, according to the school’s website. Federal and New Jersey state health officials have not advised visitors or students to avoid the campus, Mbugua said. Meningitis is a serious disease that is spread through coughing and exchanges of saliva, and people living in dormitories or other crowded living quarters are especially at risk. The most severe cases can result in death, hearing loss, brain damage, kidney disease or amputation of limbs. Symptoms include fever, headaches and stiff neck.
Eighth Princeton student diagnosed with meningitis.

Both stories we reviewed discussed costs, but the LA Times provided more details. “They can be lifesaving in appropriate patients. The devices cost $20,000 to $30,000, and normal hospitalization expenses can bring the total cost to $40,000 or more.” A bit more information would have provided a more complete picture. While the cost per patient is high, the true economic picture is more complicated. In reality, the cost of ICD in appropriate patients rivals those of the treatment of high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol in terms of life years saved. The story quantifies the potential benefits of following the guidelines for implants in a couple of different ways. “Deaths in the hospital among patients receiving defibrillators outside the guidelines were 0.57%, compared with 0.18% among those who received them within the guidelines. About 3.23% of those receiving the devices outside guidelines had complications, compared with 2.41% of those within guidelines. The median length of a hospital stay was three days for those outside the guidelines, compared with one day for those within them.” High in the story, the LA Times explains that unnecessary defibrillators increased the risk of harm, but it also put in some important context. “Although the absolute risk of dying is still low — less than 1% — such patients also endure longer hospitalizations and other complications and add substantially to the nation’s healthcare costs, researchers from the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C., reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.” The story also quantifies harms later in the piece. The story does a good job examining the evidence with the help of some outside experts. One of the best parts of the story, in comparison with the Wall Street Journal blog, is how this story explains why certain patients didn’t meet the guidelines for the implants. The story does so in clear terms, unlike the Journal. “The team found that 25,145 of the implants were for causes that were not covered by the guidelines. Of those, 9,257 were in patients who had had a heart attack within 40 days and 15,604 were in patients with newly diagnosed heart failure. These problems fall outside the guidelines because they have not been studied in clinical trials of the devices or because clinical trials have shown that the devices are not effective in treating them.” We wish the story had taken advantage of the accompanying editorial. In reality, only one of the criteria (severe heart failure) is an absolute and only includes about 2.5% of the ICD implanted patients. The other patients who did not meet criteria did so because of the timing of the implant. Not all patients who have a heart attack or who undergo coronary artery surgery will eventually need an ICD. Many however are left with a sufficiently damaged heart to meet criteria. So, while the story does a good job reporting on the study, it really does not go as far as we would have liked in its interpretation. The story does not engage in disease-mongering, far from it. The story provides good insights and context from outside sources, including Dr. Shephal Doshi and Dr. Robert Ruelaz. We wish the story had pointed out, as the Wall Street Journal blog did, that the study was funded by Medtronic, which makes one of these devices. That is important context for readers. Without it, we feel this story does not meet this criteria. And, as already noted above, we often wonder, as we did in this case, why the accompanying journal editorial wasn’t cited. The story does not offer a comparison of the implants to other treatments. Even a line about other approaches may have satisfied this criterion. Unlike the WSJ blog post we reviewed, this story pointed out the massive scope of this study and, thus, the widespread use of these implants. “The researchers examined a registry of implants maintained by the American College of Cardiology that covers an estimated 95% of all U.S. implants. The team studied 111,707 implants for what is called primary prevention, performed between January 2006 and June 2009. Primary prevention is for patients who had not had a recent heart attack or a problem with the bottom chambers of the heart.” This story points out, as the WSJ blog story failed to do, that this same team of researchers had previously studied the underuse of these implants. “In previous studies, Al-Khatib and her colleagues have examined underuse of the devices and found that many patients who could benefit from the defibrillators did not get them. This time, she said, “we decided to look at the flip side.”” This speaks to the novelty and the importance of the devices in the population of patients who meet the guidelines. The story does not rely on a news release.

Study finds overuse of implanted defibrillators