Childhood Measles Exposure and Later-Life Cognitive Function​

There is growing evidence that infectious diseases can have lasting effects on immunological, inflammatory, and vascular processes. We propose to evaluate to what extent public health campaigns aimed at preventing the spread of childhood communicable diseases may reduce an individual’s risk for Alzheimer’s and other dementias. The proposed project will leverage the introduction of a measles vaccine in 1963, and the corresponding dramatic reductions in morbidity from childhood infectious diseases, to examine how childhood measles exposure relates to cognitive functioning later in life. We will accomplish our study aims using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a NIH-funded longitudinal population-based study of individuals over age 50 with validated cognitive measures and geographic identifiers that will allow us to link contextual data, e.g., measles incidence rates, to an individual’s state of birth.