Measles Outbreak Leads to Dangerous Vitamin A Toxicity [View all]

Source: US News

As a measles outbreak spreads across the United States, doctors are now seeing a new and unexpected danger: Children getting sick from taking too much vitamin A.

At Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, several unvaccinated children showed signs of liver problems after taking large amounts of vitamin A, according to Dr. Lara Johnson, the hospital’s chief medical officer.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promoted vitamin A during the outbreak, even suggesting it might help prevent measles. But doctors say this isn’t true.

“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. That’s a problem, especially during an epidemic,” Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN. “And second, you have this unregulated medicine in terms of doses being given and potential toxicities.”

Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-03-28/measles-outbreak-leads-to-dangerous-vitamin-a-toxicity

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In my most humble opinion US News blew it on the headline for this article. The measles outbreak isn't causing parents to overdose their kids on Vitamin A, but rather anti-vax misinformation.