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0:00
Hello, my name is Anthony Rees.
I'm a chemist turned biochemist.
I was a university lecturer
in molecular biophysics
at the University
of Oxford and later
Professor and Head
of biochemistry
at the University of Bath.
My field of interest
is immunology
with a special intereste
in antibodies.
Since 2012, I've been writing
about the history of antibodies
and more recently vaccines.
The lectures in this
three-part series relate
to the history of vaccines.
In January of 2022 last year,
my book on the
history of vaccines
was published and
it's from this book
that I've selected
a few examples
with pathogens that
have afflicted
the human population
over thousands of years.
We'll look at some of
the early curative
and often crude measures used
before the advent of modern
medical technologies.
And in particular,
the seismic effect of
vaccines on preventing
human disease and
reducing mortality.
1:02
In this second lecture,
we'll be looking at the
history of vaccines
for three different diseases.
Measles and poliomyelitis
caused by viruses
and tuberculosis a
bacterial disease.
1:16
On the title, I've indicated
measles, still a serious
disease of childhood,
which might surprise you.
1:24
Measles and rubella,
sometimes or maybe more
commonly called German measles
are exanthematous diseases.
You can see that
derives from Greek.
They're characterized by
simultaneous skin eruptions
in different parts of the body.
Mumps as well joins them
as three diseases
caused by RNA viruses.
Measles, which technically
is called rubeola,
and mumps are paramyxoviruses
from that family,
but sit in different
genera that family,
while rubella is a togavirus.
Just to note,
rubeola for measles
is not commonly used
since it can be easily
confused with rubella,
so we'll call it
measles from now on.
None of the three viruses
is known to have an
animal host yet.
The need for prevention
of infection
with the measles virus is
critical for avoidance
of a highly contagious
disease that during 2019
caused more than 200,000
deaths globally.
That's data from the WHO
and the US Centers
for Disease Control,
mainly among children
under the age of five.
You can see from the slide,
if you just look at the top 2
colours in the right-hand list,
that more than a 1000
deaths or infections
per annum occur in
something like 38 percent
of the countries in the world.
It's not as if measles
has gone away.
Often the infection
leads to complications
affecting around 30 percent
of infected individuals.
Complications include diarrhoea
around one in 12 cases,
otitis media inflammation
of the middle ear,
that's one in 14,
pneumonia one in 17
and in rare cases
acute encephalitis,
around one in 1000 cases.
