During 30 years of worldwide use, measles virus (MV) vaccination has brought about a dramatic reduction in the morbidity and mortality due to measles infection. In spite of extensive evidence confirming the safety of the vaccine, concerns have recently been raised about possible links with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The publication of this work, which arose principally from a research group in the United Kingdom, has caused a drop in vaccination uptake and subsequently resulted in re-establishment of endemic measles in various parts of Europe. In this thesis, we sought to replicate the real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays designed by this research group to determine whether MV genes were present in intestinal samples from patients with Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and non-IBD controls, as well as in PBMC specimens from children with ASD and developmentally healthy controls. We also developed a probe-based real-time RT-PCR assay to detect MV genes in these same samples. We found no evidence to support the contention that MV persists in individuals with IBD or ASD.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.97939 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | D'Souza, Yasmin. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Microbiology and Immunology.) |
| Rights | © Yasmin D'Souza, 2005 |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002616986, proquestno: AAIMR24652, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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