The first sign came when Deepanwita Dasgupta was 5 and started stumbling more while playing at her home in Bangalore in southern India. The girl was always up to something, so her parents figured extra bumps and bruises were just symptoms of an active childhood. Maybe, they thought, it was ill-fitting shoes.
Relatives described the unicorn-loving child as smart, affectionate, and occasionally rascally. Before she learned the alphabet, she had figured out how to find her favorite show, Blippi, on a phone. She was known to sneak butter from the fridge to enjoy a few finger licks.
But then her limbs started jerking. A spinal tap revealed measles in her cerebrospinal fluid. The virus she probably had as an infant had secretly made its way to her brain. Now 8 years old, Deepanwita is paralyzed, unable to talk.
Measles causes complications 鈥� ranging from diarrhea to death 鈥� in , according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Some are immediate, while others take weeks or months to appear. The one Deepanwita is experiencing, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE, typically takes years to rear its head.
鈥淧eople think, 鈥極h, you know, if we get measles, then we鈥檒l be fine, because I know my neighbor had it and they鈥檙e fine,鈥欌�� said , who leads the national Child Neurology Society but spoke to 杨贵妃传媒視頻 Health News in her capacity as a New York City doctor with expertise in neurologic conditions.
Measles, though, can be dangerous: A will have to relearn how to walk after enduring one of the more immediate complications, brain swelling. And every so often, the virus plants a ticking time bomb in the nervous system. A person can recover from measles and continue life as usual, no longer contagious and without any identifiable symptoms 鈥� sometimes for a decade or more 鈥� before problems appear. While some patients end up severely disabled for a while, Khakoo said, the condition is almost always fatal.
Before the advent of widespread and effective vaccines, the complication occurred enough in the U.S. that in the 1960s a doctor created of SSPE patients. Researchers about 1 in 10,000 people who get measles will develop SSPE, but the risk is significantly higher for those who contract measles before age 5. Populous nations where the virus is endemic, including India, see cases routinely.
Now, doctors and researchers fear that as vaccination rates drop and measles spreads in the U.S., cases of this debilitating complication will also rise here. Since the start of 2025, the over 3,500 measles cases 鈥� more than in the entire preceding decade 鈥� mostly people who were unvaccinated. Many were children. Last year, Connecticut doctors with SSPE, and in California, a school-age child who鈥檇 had measles as an infant .
鈥淲e are likely to see SSPE cases going forward, especially if we don鈥檛 get this under control,鈥� said , a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics鈥� Committee on Infectious Diseases and author of the book .
Concern about SSPE was great enough that in January, the Child Neurology Society to educate U.S. clinicians about the condition, and doctors who have seen such cases are warning their peers.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 have a way of knowing who鈥檚 going to get it, and we don鈥檛 have a way of very effectively treating it,鈥� said , a professor of neurology with the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. 鈥淭he one best thing that we can do, ideally, is to prevent children from having to go through it in the first place.鈥�
The recommended two-dose measles vaccine slashes an exposed person鈥檚 risk of getting the contagious virus from 鈥� and thus reduces the chance of SSPE. The vaccines carry small risks of and a , but measles itself has a higher risk of causing both.
Cases in the U.S.
A of California children who developed SSPE after a measles outbreak there years ago determined that 1 case is diagnosed for about every 1,400 known cases of measles in children under age 5, and 1 for every 600 infected babies.
The researchers also found that, over the years, doctors had missed some cases among patients who had died with undiagnosed neurologic illness.
The possibility that future cases could go undiagnosed spurred and her colleagues to publish a news release in September when a Los Angeles County child .
鈥淲e鈥檝e had very few cases of measles in the last 25 years in this country,鈥� said Yeganeh, who is the medical director with the Vaccine Preventable Disease Control Program at the Los Angeles County public health department and has had two patients with SSPE. 鈥淯nfortunately, that鈥檚 changing, and so we wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of this long-term complication.鈥�
The California child who died had gotten measles as an infant, Yeganeh said, before the child could receive the vaccine. Measles is highly contagious, so at least 95% of the population must be immune to it to protect vulnerable people 鈥� including babies too young to vaccinate and people who are immunocompromised 鈥� from infection.
鈥淭his is an example of someone who did everything right, wanted to protect their child against this infection, and unfortunately ended up losing their child because we didn鈥檛 have herd immunity for them,鈥� Yeganeh said.
Shortly after Yeganeh鈥檚 group published the news release in California, Nelson was working to get the word out, too.
He had recently seen a 5-year-old whose family had traveled to the U.S. for medical care after the child started stumbling, jerking, hallucinating about bugs and animals, and having seizures. The child had contracted measles as an infant and had been too young to be vaccinated. Nelson diagnosed the child with SSPE.
鈥淚magine that: Having a child who is healthy and happy, moving to talking less and less, eventually not able to walk,鈥� Nelson said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a very sad thing.鈥�
He thought he would encounter the condition only in medical school textbooks, as a relic of the past. Instead, in October he found himself presenting the case at the Child Neurology Society鈥檚 national conference and participating in the society鈥檚 video about the condition. 鈥淚鈥檝e now seen something I shouldn鈥檛 have ideally seen ever in my career,鈥� he said.
Warning Signs From India
Globally, the number of measles outbreaks in recent years, and physicians in places including and have recently seen clusters of SSPE.
The high human cost of measles鈥� spread is especially evident in India. While total cases aren鈥檛 tracked, about 200 families caring for people with SSPE, including Deepanwita鈥檚, are in a single chat group in the Bangalore area.
In New Delhi, Sheffali Gulati and sees about 10 new patients a year with the condition, what she calls the 鈥渄elayed echo鈥� of measles outbreaks. The youngest she has seen was 3 years old.
鈥淭he ages are , and a death or a vegetative state can develop as soon as in six months to five years of onset,鈥� said Gulati, who leads the pediatric neurology program at the and until recently led India鈥檚 .
Gulati hasn鈥檛 found any treatments that reverse SSPE鈥檚 course, only some that slow its progress. She鈥檚 found herself counseling parents: It鈥檚 catastrophic, it鈥檚 not their fault, and they can do nothing but accept it.
Deepanwita鈥檚 relatives try to find joy where they can. They think they noticed the girl smiling when her favorite cousin called recently. Anindita Dasgupta, her mother, said Deepanwita moves her hands and feet on her own and sometimes turns her head, especially when her father enters the room. The girl communicates with her parents through her eyes and a few sounds.
But it鈥檚 far from where she was in 2022: At a cousin鈥檚 birthday, a few months before noticeable symptoms started, Deepanwita started the birthday song and sang the loudest.
At her own 8th-birthday gathering last year, Deepanwita, wearing a pink eyelet dress and a nasal tube, could only blink and move her eyes as she sat propped up before two cakes that she would not be able to eat. She can no longer swallow, so her mom dabbed a bit of icing on her tongue.
Research That Shouldn鈥檛 Be Needed
, a molecular biologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has been for years. He recently used postmortem brain tissue to map how the measles virus can spread from the frontal cortex to colonize the entire brain. Still, he said it鈥檚 a 鈥渂lack box鈥� what exactly measles is doing in those dormant years between the initial infection and when the symptoms of neurologic damage crop up.
It鈥檚 possible the virus replicates in the brain that whole time, undetected, killing off neurons. But with so many neurons in the human brain 鈥� 10 times as many as people living on the planet 鈥� the brain may find a way to adjust, Cattaneo said, until finally it can鈥檛 anymore.
He鈥檚 applying for funding to continue research on the disease and possible treatments, though ultimately, he wishes he didn鈥檛 have to. The tools to obliterate the condition already exist.
鈥淭he problem could be solved with vaccination,鈥� Cattaneo said. The U.S. should have no cases of SSPE, he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just painful.鈥�