Texas children poisoned after RFK Jr touts vitamin A as measles treatment
Texas hospitals are treating children with vitamin A poisoning after Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, promoted the supplement as a treatment for measles.
The Covenant Children's hospital in Lubbock, a city in north west Texas, is looking after a small number of patients who all required treatment for measles but who also had elevated levels of vitamin A that was causing abnormal liver function, Texas Public Radio reported.
There have also been reports of measles patients with abnormal liver function in neighbouring New Mexico.
Both states have been hit hard by the worst US measles outbreak in years, even though the disease was declared eliminated in the country at the turn of the millennium.
Almost 500 measles cases across 21 states have been confirmed by the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) as of March 28 – a 360 per cent increase from the week before.
Dr Ashish Jha, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator and dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, told ABC news on Monday that the US was 'on track to have the worst measles outbreak of this century'.
Some 97 per cent of those infected had not been vaccinated and two people have died – the first measles deaths in 10 years.
Mr Kennedy has been promoting vitamin A as a treatment for measles, writing in an article for Fox News that the supplement 'can dramatically reduce measles mortality'.
He has also said the US government is 'delivering vitamin A' to West Texas to fight the outbreak., claiming that doctors are getting 'very, very good results'.
Protection from measles is already readily available in the US in the form of the two-dose MMR vaccine – a preventative treatment with 97 per cent efficacy according to the CDC.
While Mr Kennedy has voiced support for vaccines to protect both individuals and communities, he maintains that they are a 'personal decision'.
Experts now fear that his endorsement of alternative treatments is confusing parents on how to keep their children safe.
'If people have the mistaken impression that you have an either-or choice of MMR vaccine or vitamin A, you're going to get a lot of kids unnecessarily infected with measles,' said Dr Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development.
'That's a problem, especially during an epidemic,' he told CNN. 'And second, you have this unregulated medicine in terms of doses being given and potential toxicities.'
Reports in Texas of heightened demand for cod liver oil, which is high in vitamin A, suggest that children are being given the supplement at home in an effort to treat the disease.
Taking too much of the supplement can lead to vitamin A toxicity, which can cause headaches, nausea, vomiting and, in extreme cases, liver damage.
Excess vitamin A in pregnant women can also cause birth defects.
While health officials are concerned that the public is being misled, vitamin A, when administered in a hospital setting, can help reduce the severity of a measles infection.
'Like much of what RFK says, there's always a kernel of truth, which he sort of manipulates to legitimise the things he's saying,' Dr Anita Patel, a paediatric critical care doctor in Washington DC, told the Huffington Post.
'The kernel of truth is that he's right. Vitamin A at very high doses – high doses that you would never administer by yourself at home – but high-dose vitamin A administered in the hospital has shown to reduce both mortality and duration and severity of [measles] illness.'
A CDC advisory recently said that vitamin A supplements could be used as a therapy for measles, but reaffirmed the importance of vaccination.
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