Measles Susceptibility of Hospital Personnel

The article by Schwarcz and colleagues 1 is a timely reminder that routine measles susceptibility testing or vaccination should be considered for health care workers. In particular, the use of age criteria for predicted measles immunity may be suboptimal and we would like to present data supporting this conclusion. From July 1, 1988, to October 31, 1988, 602 employees at the Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center (Bellflower, Calif) were serologically tested for measles immunity. The employee's ages ranged from 19 to 68 years (mean age, 40.7) with 104 male (17%) and 498 female (83%) individuals. Four hundred eighty-four (80%) subjects were born before 1957, while 118 (20%) were born in 1957 or later. Sixty-five (11%) of the employees were found to be nonimmune by means of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Measlestat, Whittaker Bioproducts, Walkersville, Md) (predicted index value of 1.0 or less), with 46 of these employees being born before 1957. The employee's age,