SSPE-epidemiology and measles vaccination: our cases

We are discussing the results of an epidemiologic prospective study of 194 children with SSPE. We analyzed, registered and treated these SSPE patients in the period from 1952 to 1983 at the Department for Child Neurology and Psychiatry in Belgrade. There were 140 boys and 54 girls with SSPE. The male to female ratio was 2.6:1. The average age of onset was 8.3 years for boys and 7.2 years for girls, the overall average being 7.7 years. The average duration of illness was 10 months for boys and 8 months for girls; the overall average duration of SSPE was 9 months. The average age for measles infection was 2.4 years. The interval between measles infection and clinical manifestation of SSPE was 5.5 years. The patients came from different parts of Yugoslavia. Most of them were from SR Serbia (95 patients or 49%), AP Vojvodina (39 patients or 20%), SR Bosnia and Herzegovina (22 patients or 11%), AP Kosovo (14 patients or 7.2%), SR Macedonia (14 patients or 7.2%), SR Croatia (6 patients or 3%), and SR Montenegro (4 patients or 2.5%). Mass measles vaccination started in SR Serbia in 1972. In the period 1952-1983 there was an average of six registered patients with SSPE per year. In the same period, there were four peaks of illness: 20 patients in 1957, 15 patients in 1958, 12 patients in 1961, and 9 patients in 1977. The average number of SSPE per year in the period 1952-1972 was 7.2 patients before mass vaccination. The average number of SSPE per year in the period 1973-1983 was 3.3 patients after mass vaccination.