RT-PCR measles test kit

[Ciaosy]

Hello forum.
Are there any microbioogists or virologists on this group who could advise me how to obtain an RT-PCR test kit to enable me to test my severely autistic adult son to see if he has any residual measles virus that could be posibly causing his epilepsy ?

 

[Ciaosy]

I have read that several viruses can cause /contribute to epilepsy, although our consultant doesn't agree. Also, my autistic son has had a measles type rash on his chest and back several times over the years. This has piqued my interest in trying to get the measles test to try to find out.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Measles virus may cause encephalitis, but this is a global, not localized, infection that would act as a focus for epilepsy. There is another form of encephilitis that can be caused by measles virus years after the initial infection. It is far better to prevent that paramyxovirus infection through a vaccination rather taking the risk of neurological damage by that virus.

 

[Ciaosy]

Thanks for your input, but I am still hoping there is a medical / microbiologist / virologist type person on this forum who explain to me, how I can get the RT-PCR test on a private basis as my local doctor refuses to help.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Thanks for your input, but I am still hoping there is a medical / microbiologist / virologist type person on this forum who explain to me, how I can get the RT-PCR test on a private basis as my local doctor refuses to help.

My CV is that I have degrees in Microbiology and Cell Biology. I have been a TA in Medical Microbiology for 3 years and have two publications in Molecular genetics and two in Experimental Pathology. Seizures without a presentation of measles encephilitis is mutually exclusive. That is why the rt-PCR is useless as a diagnost test. Mitigating seizures would require ablation of the cortical tissue that is the focus. I have seen epilepsy after measles encephalitis and it is usually multifocal and severe. If there is residual "slow" paramyxovirus nothing can be done as in 7 to 10 years fatal Subacute Sclerosing Pan-Encephilitis will develop. Such a residual, slow virus, after measles symptoms resolve, passes from cell to cell junctions with no viremia, as with normal infection, and would be undetectable by a naso-pharyngeal swab. You are barking up the wrong tree.

Concentrate instead on curing or managing the epilepsy.

 

[Ciaosy]

Thanks Gerald for your reply and information. Now that we have established that I am prepared to spend money on a long shot, I still don't know how I can obtain the test or the procedure to return it and get results without my local GP being involved. Do you know?

 

[Ciaosy]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I recently joined this forum to try to get information about how to access a measles PCR test kit. I am getting everyone's opinion re what they think I should do, but no answers to my question. I wonder if anyone can actually give me an answer to my original question?

 

[Ciaosy]

Thank you for your kind words. I was hoping that someone on this forum had been able to test there child to see if they had any lingering Vaccine strain measles virus. Not to worry, I shall just carry on my journey and see how far I can get.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Once the symptoms of measles is resolved, there is no lingering virus that is detectable by nasopharangeal swab! To detect measles in the CNS a biopsy of the brain or sample of the CSF would be necessary and either of these carries risk. The physician knows all of this and you are looking for a zebra in a field of horses. You are pursuing a completely useless path. Has he been diagnosed with encephalitis? Unless he has had encephalitis the correlation with epilepsy is not supported! If you suspect this as a result of vaccination, there is a low risk of febrile seizures, with an onset 7 to 10 days after vaccination. This is not associated with the virus, but instead a reaction of the body to pyrogens. This is treated with rectal diezepam. But then, you now need to be concerned every time he runs a fever.

What is your medical training and experience that you would make the correlation you are promoting?

 

[Stuttermabolur]

I'm not nearly as accomplished or knowledgeable as Geralt, but still have an undergraduate degree in biochemistry and molecular biology as well as an article in the Journal of Proteome Research.

First off, he is completely right in everything he said, and what you are seeking won't help whatsoever. Secondly however, you can't simply find a "PCR test". You need to perform PCR on a sample by using a PCR machine. Those things are very expensive, and should only be used by scientists or technicians who know what they are doing. When you are getting tested for Covid using PCR, the scientist bring the samples to the lab where they analyse it using the machine in a procedure which takes hours by trained scientists (including sample prep). It is also quite expensive. The price is brought down due to automation and large batches but a single sample costs way more. If your child does not have an active measles infection, there is also no way you could see it by using PCR. What would you test? His blood? You need a lot of solutions, equipment, primer and other stuff found in a lab to perform just one PCR and would in addition need to find the correct primers for the measles fragment you are searching for, so no-one who is being honest can find a PCR test for you.​

 

[Ciaosy]

If nothing else, it would just give me peace of mind if I could get a negative PCR measles swab test done on my son.

Leeds teaching hospital have a measles oral swab test in their Virology/Serology test repertoire with a three day turnaround. Unfortunately I have yet to find a way of getting/using it without a doctors input.

There have been several studies done, discovering vaccine strain measles virus in people years after they have had their vaccinations. this is one I turned up in pubmed just now.

Measles Vaccine Virus RNA in Children More Than 100 Days after Vaccination - PubMed

Measles vaccines have been in use since the 1960s with excellent safety and effectiveness profiles. Limited data are available on detection of measles vaccine virus (MeVV) RNA in human subjects following vaccination. Available evidence suggests MeVV RNA can be identified up to 14 days after...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

OK, I have tried to explain why the datum you seek is not determinative of epilepsy. Now I get hints that you want to blame the vaccine. A better study published in PNAS demonstrates that during normal infection ". . . prolonged RNA presence is characteristic of primary infection. We found that viral RNA persisted in the blood, respiratory tract, or lymph nodes four to five times longer than the infectious virus and that the clearance of MeV RNA from blood happened in three phases: rapid decline coincident with clearance of infectious virus, a rebound phase with increases up to 10-fold, and a phase of slow decrease to undetectable levels."

I will not aid anybody on a fishing expedition to blame that vaccine for injury when the datum you seek is NOT evidence of an injury that caused a coincident epilepsy.

 

[Bolletje]

Medical doctor here. I second what @Gerald Wilgus and @Stuttermabolur have already said.

I’m so sorry to hear about your son’s epilepsy and I understand it must be very hard to deal with it. Your quest for a PCR test to determine the cause will prove to be a fruitless one though. You’re not going to get this test without a physician performing it for you, and a physician isn’t likely to perform this for you because it won’t answer your question re: the cause of the epilepsy.

I’ve read the article you quoted. The text I’m referring to is quoted below my response.

As the article states, the number of cases in which they’ve actually detected MeVV is extremely low and they’re not even sure whether this is something that can periodically be detected in all vaccinated people.

As you can also gather from the article, it’s quite the process to perform this analysis. You can’t have this done commercially.

And as you can read in the article too, even if, for the sake of argument, your son were to receive a PCR test for MeVV and it were to test positive, it still tells you nothing about whether or not it causes the epilepsy, since a positive MeVV test still doesn’t tell you whether or not there’s an active infection and it’s not even certain whether a positive MeVV test has any clinical significance whatsoever.

I know you’re not asking for advice on what to do, but since your quest for a test is a dead end you’re getting it anyway: work with your physician to get the best care for your son, rather than grasping at straws to look for extremely unlikely explanations in avenues that are not accessible to you.

We report these findings as an initial communication but recognise the limitations in our work. Firstly, we have reported data on only 11 episodes of MeVV RNA detection. These specific cases were subjected to further analysis due to the extreme period between detection and last recorded vaccination. From these 11 cases it is not possible to determine if MeVV RNA may be intermittently detectable in some or most vaccinated individuals, or whether we are reporting a truly rare event. Also, due to small case numbers, it is unclear if these detections are specifically associated with concurrent presence of other respiratory viruses or the cases could have unidentified immunodeficiencies causing persistence of MeVV. Finally, detection of MeVV RNA alone does not allow for any assessment of whether infectious virus is present.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

Medical doctor here. I second what @Gerald Wilgus and @Stuttermabolur have already said.

I’m so sorry to hear about your son’s epilepsy and I understand it must be very hard to deal with it. Your quest for a PCR test to determine the cause will prove to be a fruitless one though. You’re not going to get this test without a physician performing it for you, and a physician isn’t likely to perform this for you because it won’t answer your question re: the cause of the epilepsy.

I’ve read the article you quoted. The text I’m referring to is quoted below my response.

As the article states, the number of cases in which they’ve actually detected MeVV is extremely low and they’re not even sure whether this is something that can periodically be detected in all vaccinated people.

As you can also gather from the article, it’s quite the process to perform this analysis. You can’t have this done commercially.

And as you can read in the article too, even if, for the sake of argument, your son were to receive a PCR test for MeVV and it were to test positive, it still tells you nothing about whether or not it causes the epilepsy, since a positive MeVV test still doesn’t tell you whether or not there’s an active infection and it’s not even certain whether a positive MeVV test has any clinical significance whatsoever.

I know you’re not asking for advice on what to do, but since your quest for a test is a dead end you’re getting it anyway: work with your physician to get the best care for your son, rather than grasping at straws to look for extremely unlikely explanations in avenues that are not accessible to you.

So right. The dynamic observed is consistent with the study published in the PNAS showing consistency with the dynamics of a primary infection. ". . . prolonged RNA presence is characteristic of primary infection. We found that viral RNA persisted in the blood, respiratory tract, or lymph nodes four to five times longer than the infectious virus and that the clearance of MeV RNA from blood happened in three phases: rapid decline coincident with clearance of infectious virus, a rebound phase with increases up to 10-fold, and a phase of slow decrease to undetectable levels."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1211138109