The Facts In The Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield"

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Does prenatal Tdap vaccination increase autism risk for infants?

This new study, however, sought to assess whether there was a link between prenatal Tdap vaccination and development of ASD. Researchers studied more than 109,000 mothers at Kaiser Permanente Southern California hospitals between 2011 and 2014. The children of the vaccinated mothers were followed for several years, and ASD was diagnosed in 1.6% of the children of mothers vaccinated during their pregnancies.

The report reveals that the incidence of autism diagnoses declined throughout the study period, from 2% to 1.5% in children of mothers who were not vaccinated during pregnancy, and from 1.8% to 1.2% in mothers who did receive the vaccination. Overall, researchers note, the incidence of ASD in the vaccinated group was 3.78 per 1000 person-years compared with 4.05 per 1000 person-years in the unvaccinated group.

“We found no evidence of increased risk for ASD diagnosis associated with Tdap vaccination during pregnancy,” the report concludes.

Read more here in Contemporary Pediatrics.

FDA did not issue new statement on vaccines and autism

Some health websites have misrepresented the fine print on an old vaccine label to falsely claim that the “FDA announced that vaccines are causing autism.” Vaccines do not cause autism and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not make any new statement this week about the long-debunked claim.

Autism was listed as one of many “adverse events” on the 2005 label of Sanofi Pasteur’s Tripedia childhood vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. When the vaccine was first approved, such reports were generated voluntarily by consumers and were automatically added to the FDA label, even if there was no plausible connection to the product.

The 2005 label notes that such reports do not “establish a causal relationship” to the vaccine. Since then, the FDA has changed its labeling rules and now only includes adverse events “for which there is some basis to believe there is a causal relationship,” the agency said in a statement.

Sanofi Pasteur stopped making the vaccine years ago, and its last shipment of it was in 2012.

Medical researchers have debunked claims that vaccines given to children can lead to autism and developmental disorders. A study that drew a connection between autism and vaccines was found faulty and retracted in 2010.

Source

Four vaccine myths and where they came from

False: Spreading out vaccines can be safer for kids

False: Countering mercury from vaccines can make children better

False: Mercury in vaccines acts as a neurotoxin

False: Vaccination can cause autism

Read more here at Science. 

Flu Vaccine During Pregnancy Not Linked To Autism

Question  Is there an association between maternal influenza infection and vaccination and autism risk?

Findings  In a cohort study of 196 929 children, of whom 3103 had austism spectrum disorder, maternal influenza infection during pregnancy was not associated with increased autism risk. There was a suggestion of increased risk of autism spectrum disorders among children whose mothers received an influenza vaccination during their first trimester, but the association was statistically insignificant after adjusting for multiple comparisons, indicating that the finding could be due to chance.

Read more here at JAMA Pediatrics.

Autism, Denmark and again no link with vaccines.

Although the results from our comparison of recurrence in full- and half-siblings support the role of genetics in ASDs, the significant recurrence in maternal half-siblings may support the idea of a contributing role of factors associated with pregnancy and the maternal intrauterine environment. Finally, the lack of a time trend in the relative recurrence risk in our data suggests that the likely combination of genetic and environmental factors contributes to the risk for ASD recurrence in siblings or that the risk for recurrence because of such factors has not been affected by the rise in the ASD prevalence. The current Denmark study included individuals diagnosed until the end of 2010. I.e. there were 10 more years of followup. In those 10 years a lot more people were diagnosed. Where there were 956 diagnosed with autism by 2000 (for birth years 1971 to 2000), 2321 were diagnosed by 2010. That’s an increase of 240%. And the new study focused on birth years 1980 to 1999. I.e. the entire 1970′s birth cohort is not included in this count, and they still found over twice as many autistics. Where were they in 2000, when the previous study was performed? Living in Denmark, not identified as autistic. And, those numbers were for childhood autism. For ASD, the increase is even larger. 10,377 Danes had an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis (for birth years 1980-1999) in the new study (the previous study included none). That’s a whopping 1080% increase. Again, there are a few reasons for this (including the increased awareness above), but here’s what “expanding the definition” does to autism. Those increases would be an “epidemic” to some if it weren’t for the fact that those autistic Danes were there all along. They just weren’t diagnosed in 2000.

 Read more here. 

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Lessons from the MMR scare

Please join BMJ Editor Fiona Godlee for a discussion of the stunning investigation she published earlier this year that revealed the MMR scare was based not on bad science but on deliberate fraud. The three-part series was produced by journalist Brian Deer, who spent seven years investigating Andrew Wakefields infamous study linking the MMR vaccine with autism, discovering Wakefield had been paid by a lawyer to influence his results and had blatantly manipulated the study data.

In an editorial accompanying Deerӳ report, Godlee and colleagues noted, Science is based on trust. Without trust, research cannot function and evidence based medicine becomes a folly. Journal editors, peer reviewers, readers, and critics have all based their responses to Wakefield's small case series on the assumption that the facts had at least been honestly documented. Such a breach of trust is deeply shocking. And even though almost certainly rare on this scale, it raises important questions about how this could happen, what could have been done to uncover it earlier, what further inquiry is now needed, and what can be done to prevent something like this happening again.Ԡ

Click here to watch the video.

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IOM says vaccines cause few side effects

After a close review of more than 1,000 research studies, a federal panel of experts has concluded that vaccines cause very few side effects, and found no evidence that vaccines cause autism or type 1 diabetes. The report, issued on Thursday by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies of Sciences, is the first comprehensive report on vaccine side effects since 1994.

 Click here to read the full article.

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Vaccination Status and Health in Children and Adolescents: Findings ofthe German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children andAdolescents (KiGGS)

Background: Whether unvaccinated children and adolescents differ from those vaccinated in terms of health is subject to some discussion. Method: We evaluated data on diseases that are preventable by vaccination, infectious and atopic diseases, and vaccinations received that had been collected between 2003 and 2006 in a representative sample of 17 641 subjects aged 0 to 17 years in the framework of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (Kinder- und Jugendgesundheitssurvey, KiGGS). Results: Evaluable data on vaccinations were available for 13 453 subjects aged 1–17 years from non-immigrant families. 0.7% of them (95% confidence interval: 0.5%–0.9%) were not vaccinated. The lifetime prevalence of diseases preventable by vaccination was markedly higher in unvaccinated than in vaccinated subjects. Unvaccinated children aged 1–5 years had a median number of 3.3 (2.1–4.6) infectious diseases in the past year, compared to 4.2 (4.1–4.4) in vaccinated children. Among 11- to 17-year-olds, the corresponding figures were 1.9 (1.0–2.8) (unvaccinated) versus 2.2 (2.1–2.3) (vaccinated). The lifetime prevalence of at least one atopic disease among 1- to 5-year-olds was 12.6% (5.0%–28.3%) in unvaccinated children and 15.0% (13.6%–16.4%) in vaccinated children. In older children, atopy was more common, but its prevalence was not found to depend on vaccination status: among 6- to 10-year-olds, the prevalence figures were 30.1% (12.9%–55.8%) for unvaccinated children versus 24.4% (22.8%–26.0%) for vaccinated children, and the corresponding figures for 11- to 17-year-olds were 20.3% (10.1%–36.6%) versus 29.9% (28.4%–31.5%). Conclusion: The prevalence of allergic diseases and non-specific infections in children and adolescents was not found to depend on vaccination status.

 Click here for full article.

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Television Review - The Vaccine War on PBS

Much of the program is taken up with a rehashing of how the battle lines came to be drawn on this issue: suspicions by parents when autism and other problems seem to descend on their children right after vaccination; the now discredited 1998 research paper published by The Lancet linking a particular vaccine to autism; celebrity advocacy by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, who are concerned that vaccines cause harm; scientific studies from around the world finding that they don’t. The shouting continues, occasionally in demonstrations, but 24 hours a day on the Internet. And the Internet, as the program points out, is the reason that vaccines will never be fully exonerated, no matter how many studies clear them. “The original myths are still there, and they’re hard to counteract,” Dr. Cynthia Cristofani, a pediatric specialist in Oregon, says. “Conspiracy theories tend to be popular, and it’s hard to undo that kind of damage.”

 Whichever side is right, that moment between Dr. Shames and the mothers who don’t have their children vaccinated reveals that beneath the heated do-they-or-don’t-they words about vaccines themselves, there’s a more delicate question that no scientific study can answer. It involves whether parents’ rights to make choices about their children trump the needs of the community.

Watch the video here.

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