Virological diagnosis of measles.

The question which prompted the present study was: What is the diagnostic value of serological studies and measles virus isolation as a routine practice at hospitals for infectious diseases? A good opportunity for the study arose early in 1960, when a measles epidemic occurred in Helsinki. Since the original report of Enders & Peebles in 1954 [9] on the isolation of a filtrable agent from measles patients in humsn kidney tissue cultures, many investigators have succeeded in isolating measles virus [2, 7, 10-12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 201. I n studies on the epidemiology of measles, the value of serological methods, especially the complement-fixation technique, has been clearly demonstrated [ 1 4 ,