Are there different strains of the measles virus and does the MMR vaccine provide immunity against them all?!

There are different strains of the measles virus, but there's never been a record of one that's immune to the MMR vaccine to date (that I'm aware of). Given that measles has a rather high mutation rate, any easy ability for the virus to slip past the vaccine would have shown up decades ago. It's possible that one day we may run into a variation of measles that resists the vaccine, but it's going to be quite a different virus in a lot of aspects to get around MMR.

In short, yes, and yes.Health Question & Answer

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The MMR vaccine contains weakened forms of the natural viruses to give protection against disease without the risks associated with natural infection. MMR vaccine contains measles, mumps and rubella viruses (German measles) that have been modified so that they no longer cause disease symptoms in humans. The vaccine has been developed to produce an immune response sufficient to protect children against the real disease, with no illness at all or only a very mild non-infectious version of the illness.A child will be injected with the vaccine and this causes the immune system to respond and destroy the vaccine viruses. The immune system 'remembers' the virus so that there is a prompt response if exposure occurs again. The viruses in the vaccine and the natural viruses are very similar so the immune system responds to both. Therefore if a child is later infected with the real viruses these are very quickly recognized by the immune system which reacts rapidly to halt the infection.Health Question & Answer

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There's regular measles and German measles, known as rubella.

MMR stands for measles, mumps and rubella, and protects against all three.Health Question & Answer

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