MMR Autism Link Dismissed - Again
February 5th 2008
A new British study has failed to find any link between the MMR vaccine and autism - backing the conclusions of other research. Claims of the link, published in 1998, led to a massive drop in use of the MMR vaccine and in many areas numbers of vaccinations have failed to recover fully.
Researchers studied some 250 children from an area of southern England. The children were born in 1990 or 1991.
The study compared some 98 children with a disorder on the autistic spectrum with 90 children with normal development and another 52 with special educational needs but no sign of autism.
All the children had been vaccinated against MMR but not all had the double dose.
The researchers set out to test some of the theories which have been used to blame MMR for autism. One is that the vaccine triggers some of the effects of measles - but the researchers could find no difference between the children in levels of measles virus or antibodies against measles.
They could also find no evidence of bowel symptoms, such as those blamed on MMR in 1998, they report in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
The researchers led by Dr Gillian Baird, of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, the study "is now the third, and largest, study that has failed to show a link between the MMR jab and autism."
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