Where are the measles treatments?

Y2K was a good year. In 2000, officials with the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that measles had been eliminated in the United States. 

That didn’t last long. By 2001, measles had started its comeback.

Today, decreased vaccination rates have led to new measles cases in nearly every state. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States had 2,287 confirmed measles cases and three deaths in 2025. Cases in 2026 may climb even higher. Already, the United States has had 1,893 confirmed measles cases.

Around the world, around 85,000 to 95,000 people die of measles each year. The WHO has found that most of those who die of measles are unvaccinated or undervaccinated children (who weren’t old enough to receive both measles vaccine doses).

Measles is sticking around. So where are the measles treatments?

An old virus on the move

There are no specific treatments to help someone who is infected with measles virus, and that’s pretty surprising. After all, measles is a very old disease.

We know that measles swept through Persia in the twelfth century. Elizabethan England was gripped by the disease. Like today, infections back then were most dangerous for infants, children, and those who were pregnant. 

In the twentieth century, the United States saw more 500,000 measles cases each year. That was until 1963, when the Edmonston B measles vaccine was introduced. With that life-saving vaccine in hand, the United States was on its way to eliminating measles. 

Inventing a measles treatment didn’t seem necessary.

By the year 2000, a large percentage of the U.S. population was vaccinated against measles. High vaccination rates provided “herd immunity,” a sort of wall of protection, so the unvaccinated weren’t at risk of catching the disease.

We know now that “herd immunity” can fail. We also know how easily an outbreak can turn into a pandemic. 

Measles has an even worse cousin

Measles is a virus with pandemic potential. Measles virus spreads via respiratory droplets (from sneezing or coughing). The virus is also the most contagious human virus we know of. 

There’s another reason to pursue measles treatments. Measles virus is closely related to the extremely deadly Nipah virus. Both viruses are members of the Paramyxoviridae family. Nipah virus is usually transmitted from animals to humans, but it can spread from person to person via contaminated food or contact between people. 

Nipah virus has a fatality rate of between 40 percent and 75 percent, which is much higher than measles. But the two viruses still have a lot in common. They use the same molecular tools to break into human cells and establish infections.

We’d all be in trouble if measles mutated to be more deadly like Nipah, or if Nipah mutated to be more contagious like measles. 

LJI scientists deliver potential measles treatment

Here’s where immunologists are making a difference. Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) recently shared the discovery of human antibodies that can bind to and neutralize measles virus. [Read: LJI scientists take crucial step in developing world’s first measles treatment]

“Even though humanity has been aware of measles since about 1200 A.D., this is the first look at what the human antibody response to measles is,” says LJI Professor, President & CEO Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., MBA, who served a senior author for the new Cell Host & Microbe paper.

These antibodies can block measles infection, and they may serve as our first-ever measles treatments. Saphire and her colleagues found that these neutralizing antibodies reduced viral loads 500-fold in an animal model of measles infection.

Antibody-based therapies (called monoclonal antibodies) are widely used for a variety of infectious diseases. Even infants receive monoclonal antibody therapies each year to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Monoclonal antibody treatments could prevent measles infections from turning deadly. They could also be given to medical personnel or at-risk individuals if they are exposed to measles (before they get sick).

The LJI study shows which antibodies to include in this kind of treatment. There’s more work to be done, but we finally have a clear path toward treating a disease that has taken many, many lives.

Learn more:

LJI scientists take crucial step in developing world’s first measles treatment