Low and Zero Prevalence Rates of Anti-measles Virus Immunoglobulin G in Mothers and Their Infants Respectively in Health Centers in Osogbo, Nigeria

Aim: We undertook this study to determine the susceptibility of mother-infant pair participants to measles virus infection in two health centers in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria.
Study Design: This is a descriptive, cross-sectional hospital-based study.
Place and Duration of the Study: The study was carried out in Osogbo, southwestern, Nigeria between November, 2012 and February, 2013.
Methodology: With ethical approval and participants’ consents, 83 mothers and their 84 infants were consecutively recruited; blood samples were aseptically collected from them by thumb puncture onto Whatman filter paper. The papers were appropriately labeled; air-dried and kept in brown envelopes which we kept in clean polythene bags and stored at 4ºC until assayed. Freshly prepared PBS was used to elute serum from 5 to 6 punched-out disks from each Whatman filter paper. The supernatant from the spun eluate of each sample was assayed for anti-measles virus IgG using ELISA.
Results: Overall, 2.41% and zero percent seroprevalence rates were recorded from the nursing mothers and their infants respectively.
Conclusion: We concluded that the seropositivity of anti-measles virus IgG antibody in the nursing mothers from the two health facilities was very low, and that all the infants and most (97.59%) of the nursing mothers were apparently susceptible to measles virus infection.