Measles Specific IgG Antibody Level of Term Pregnant Women and Neonatal Umbilical Cords

Park, Hee Yeon; Shin, Young Kyoo; Choung, Ji Tae; Tockgo, Young Chang

Abstract

PURPOSE
Despite appropriate preventive measures, measles outbreaks occurred in the year of 1989-1990 and 1994 in Korea. Especially, the ratio of young infantile patients below 15 months old was high in those outbreaks, and the reason was, we thought, low serum level of measles specific IgG antibody in pregnant women and low transplacental transfer rate of measles specific IgG antibody to neonate. This study was performed to evaluate the serum level of measles specific IgG antibody in term pregnant women- neonate pairs.
METHODS
During Oct. 1. 1994 to Mar. 31. 1995, we collected the 44 paired sera of term pregnant women and their neonate(umbilical cord) in Anam hospital of Korea university medical center and then we measured the measles specific IgG antibody using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA: Sigma Diagnostics, SIATM Measles IgG Kit).
RESULTS
1) There was close relationship between maternal and neonatal umbilical cord sera in the level of measles specific IgG antibody(r=0.9288, p<0.001). 2) The mean antibody level of neonates was higher than that of mothers by 1.4 times (p<0.05). 3) The seropositivity of measles specific IgG antibody in term pregnant women was 45.5%(20/44) and that of neonatal umbilical cord was 56.8%(25/44).
CONCLUSIONS
Above results demonstrates that the seropositivities and levels of measles specific IgG antibody in term pregnant women and neonates were lower than expected value and partially explain the reasons for the recent measles epidemic in Korea.