Koplik's spots

They are characterized as clustered, white lesions on the buccal mucosa (opposite the upper 1st & 2nd molars) and are pathognomonic for measles.

[2] The textbook description of Koplik spots is ulcerated mucosal lesions marked by necrosis, neutrophilic exudate, and neovascularization.

Their appearance, in context of a diagnosed case, before they reach maximum infectivity, permits isolation of the contacts and greatly aids control of this highly infectious disease.

[4] Nobel laureate John F. Enders and Thomas Peebles, who first isolated the measles virus, were careful to collect their samples from patients showing Koplik's spots.

Before Koplik, the German internist Carl Jakob Adolf Christian Gerhardt (1833–1902) in 1874, the Danish physician N. Flindt in 1879, and the Russian Nil Filatov (1847–1902) in 1895, had observed equivalent phenomena.

Koplik's spots in the mouth of a child with measles, appearing as "grains of salt on a reddish background." [ 1 ]