Measles is highly treatable (Vitamin A, etc)
Acute management of measles: A systematic review of therapeutic strategies
Antiviral Research Volume 247, March 2026, 106361 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.antiviral.2026.106361
Measles remains one of the most contagious viral infections, and its resurgence due to declining global vaccination coverage has renewed interest in therapeutic and preventive strategies. This systematic review analyzes current and emerging acute therapies and their relationship to measles virology and clinical outcomes. A systematic search of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Google Scholar (1990–2025) was conducted using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria to identify clinical studies on acute measles treatment. Despite being used off-label, ribavirin and interferon-α have demonstrated reductions in severity and complications in small clinical trials and case reports.
Vitamin A supplementation remains the only widely recommended therapy with strong evidence for reducing morbidity and mortality, particularly in children with deficiency. Traditional Chinese medications such as Tanreqing and Xiyanping show symptomatic improvement but require mechanistic validation. Investigational therapeutics, including polymerase inhibitors such as ERDRP-0519, monoclonal antibodies targeting the fusion protein, and antiviral candidates such as remdesivir, offer promising future options. While vaccination remains essential, adjunctive therapies provide additional tools to reduce complications in under-vaccinated populations.
Vitamin A implementation (clipped from PDF)
Vitamin A supplementation remains the most consistently validated adjunct therapy. Its benefit is attributed to its immunomodulatory effects and ability to restore epithelial integrity, which is critical in preventing secondary infections (Vitamin A), (Alfred and KeithP, 1996).
Randomized controlled trials and meta-analyses show that high-dose vitamin A (200,000 IU for children and 100,000 IU for infants, administered on two consecutive days) significantly reduces measles-related mortality, particularly in children under two years of age (Hussey and Klein, 1990), (Coutsoudis et al., 1991), (D'Souza and D'Souza, 2002).
The World Health Organization recommends supplemental vitamin A in all children with severe measles infection, though this is often ignored in high-resource settings (D'Souza and D'Souza, 2002). The effect may be less pronounced in older children (Cleary and Hallak, 2023) and in children in high-resource settings who are less likely to be vitamin A deficient (Lo Vecchio et al., 2021).