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What causes breakthrough measles infections?

NBC News
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More than 800 people in the U.S. have had measles since the beginning of the year .

The majority of cases are in West Texas , where an outbreak that shows no signs of abating began in January .

Nearly all of the cases are among people who haven’t been vaccinated, but 3% of them are so-called breakthrough infections.

Some children vaccinated against measles can lose their protection over the course of two decades .

The measles vaccine trains the body’s immune cells to recognize different parts of the virus’ proteins called epitopes.

Some people have a very robust response because they respond to many different viral epitopes, and some people, just by chance, have immune cells that can’t recognize as many of those epitopes as many.