Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

Image

 

Autism rates in developing countries have risen remarkably in the past 20 years. For children born in 1992, according to the U.S. CDC, about 1 in 150 would be diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For children born in 2004, about 1 in 68 children would receive an ASD diagnosis. It is difficult to compare autism rates from the 1990s and later with rates from the 1940s through the 1980s: in earlier years, autism was associated primarily with very severely affected individuals and the rate of autism was estimated to be only about 1 in 10,000 people. Beginning in the 1990s, our understanding of the spectrum of autism has expanded greatly, and now individuals who would most likely previously not have been thought of as having autism may be classified with one of a variety of ASDs.

Whether the high rates of autism today are due to increased diagnosis and reporting, changing definitions of autism, or an actual increase in development of ASD is unknown. Regardless, researchers and worried parents alike have speculated about causes of autism, and the issue has been widely studied. The role of vaccines has been questioned, along with other possible risk factors for ASD, such as genetic predisposition, advanced parental age, and other environmental factors. Vaccines have perhaps received more scrutiny that any other speculated cause of ASD, and the great majority of scientists, physicians, and public health researchers have come to the conclusion that there is no association between vaccines and autism. Some, however, still question whether vaccines play a role in ASD development, and so the public health and medical establishments continue to address these concerns.

The story of how vaccines came to be questioned as a cause of autism dates back to the 1990s. In 1995, a group of British researchers published a cohort study in the Lancet showing that individuals who had been vaccinated with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) were more likely to have bowel disease than individuals who had not received MMR. One of these researchers was gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, MD, who went on to further study a possible link between the vaccine and bowel disease by speculating that persistent infection with vaccine virus caused disruption of the intestinal tissue that in turn led to bowel disease and neuropsychiatric disease (specifically, autism). Part of this hypothesis – that vaccination was associated with autism – had been suggested previously a few researchers. For example, Fudenberg, in a small pilot study published in a non-mainstream journal, posited this relationship[8], as did Gupta in a review of possible treatments for autism. This hypothesis had not been systematically investigated when Wakefield began to interrogate it.

Over the next twelve years, the possibility of a link between MMR and autism was studied exhaustively. No reputable, relevant study confirmed Wakefield’s findings; instead, many well-designed studies have found no link between MMR and bowel disease or MMR and autism.

Conclusion

A standard editorial manager system is utilized for manuscript submission, review, editorial processing and tracking which can be securely accessed by the authors, reviewers and editors for monitoring and tracking the article processing.

Manuscripts can be forwarded to the Editorial Office at autoimmunedis@eclinicalsci.com

Media Contact:
John Kimberly
Editorial Manager
Journal of Vaccines & Vaccination
Email: jvv@scholarlypub.com