The vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella does not cause autism, according to a large study that was carried out with the intention of convincing the growing number of those who doubt the justification of vaccination, writes The Guardian.
Unicef recently warned that the number of measles cases worldwide has increased at a shocking rate, and the epidemic is spreading among children who have not been vaccinated. The World Health Organization announced that non-vaccination is one of the 10 biggest threats to global health.
An article in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, published by the American Medical Association, was written by Danish researchers, who conducted one of the key studies to show that there is no link between vaccines and autism. During ten years, scientists followed 657.461 children born in Denmark, among whom there were 6.517 cases of autism.
They concluded that the MMR vaccine is not associated with the development of autism and that the risk of autism in the group of vaccinated children is the same as in unvaccinated children. This study also showed that there was no association between the child's age at the time of vaccination or the time since vaccination and the development of autism.
"We found no confirmation of the hypothesis of an increased risk for autism after MMR vaccination in an unselected population of Danish children. There is no confirmation of the hypothesis that the MMR vaccine causes autism in subgroups characterized by family and environmental risk factors and no confirmation of clustering of autism cases in a specific period of time after MMR vaccination," the scientific article says.
The researchers sought to specifically address some of the criticisms of the anti-vaccination lobby, such as the suggestion that some groups of children are more susceptible to autism after the MMR vaccine than others. They also analyzed children with a close relative who was autistic and those who had increased risk factors for autism, such as older parents. They also looked at whether there was more autism among children who received other vaccines, before the MMR vaccine.
Opponents of the MMR vaccine have also argued that there is a 'cluster' of a regressive form of autism, caused by the vaccination, that does not show up in studies of the entire population.
All these theories were tested in research and proved to be incorrect, said Hviid.
Doubts about the MMR vaccine were sown by gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, who hypothesized in 1998 that the vaccine was linked to autism. Autism symptoms often began to appear around the time the vaccine was given - in children aged 12 to 15 months.
This theory was disproved, Wakefield was later banned from practicing medicine, but after the advent of social networks, doubts about the safety of the vaccine grew. dr. Anders Peter Hviid from the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen said: "I remember even a few years ago we saw Donald Trump tweeting during his presidential campaign about how vaccines cause autism."
In an introduction to the study, Saad Omer of the Atlanta School of Public Health and Inci Yildirim of Emory University School of Medicine say the study was done even though there was no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. "In an ideal world, vaccine safety research would only be done to evaluate scientifically based hypotheses, not in response to a conspiracy theory. In reality, the hypothesis put forth by vaccine skeptics can affect public confidence in vaccination."
"Today, we live in a 'fact-resistant' world where scientifically established data do not have enough credibility. How then can doctors and public health workers deny the myth of the link between the MMR vaccine and autism," the authors of the article ask.
Omer and Yildrim offered three answers: "First, every vaccine myth should be labeled as such. The media should be urged not to offer links to ideas rejected in the text. Second, when misinformation is corrected, scientists should focus on to the main facts and not trying to answer everything.
Third, one should "offer an alternative explanation for the observed phenomenon". Otherwise, they added, the doubter will regain his previous beliefs, writes The Guardian
In Montenegro, during 2018, 200 citizens had smallpox. According to the authorities, this was the trigger for the sudden increase in the number of vaccinated children.
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