MMR vaccine
| Combination of | |
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| Measles vaccine | Vaccine |
| Mumps vaccine | Vaccine |
| Rubella vaccine | Vaccine |
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The MMR vaccine (also known as the MPR vaccine after the Latin names of the diseases) is an immunization vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella (German measles). It is a mixture of live attenuated viruses of the three diseases, administered via injection. It was first developed by Maurice Hilleman while at Merck.
A licensed vaccine to prevent measles first became available in 1963, and an improved one in 1968. Vaccines for mumps and rubella became available in 1967 and 1969, respectively. The three vaccines (for mumps, measles, and rubella) were combined in 1971 to become the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The MMR vaccine is generally administered to children around the age of one year, with a second dose before starting school (i.e. age 4/5). The second dose is a dose to produce immunity in the small number of persons (2–5%) who fail to develop measles immunity after the first dose. In the United States, the vaccine was licensed in 1971 and the second dose was introduced in 1989. It is widely used around the world; since introduction of its earliest versions in the 1970s, over 500 million doses have been used in over 60 countries. The vaccine is sold by Merck as M-M-R II, GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals as Priorix, Serum Institute of India as Tresivac, and Sanofi Pasteur as Trimovax.
It is usually considered a childhood vaccination. However, it is also recommended for use in some cases of adults with HIV.
Before the widespread use of a vaccine against measles, its incidence was so high that infection with measles was felt to be "as inevitable as death and taxes." Reported cases of measles in the United States fell from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands per year following introduction of the vaccine in 1963. Increasing uptake of the vaccine following outbreaks in 1971 and 1977 brought this down to thousands of cases per year in the 1980s. An outbreak of almost 30,000 cases in 1990 led to a renewed push for vaccination and the addition of a second vaccine to the recommended schedule. Fewer than 200 cases have been reported each year between 1997 and 2013, and the disease is no longer considered endemic.
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