Scientists tell whether there is a link between childhood vaccinations and autism

Danish scientists decided to look into a question that had worried many parents for decades - Is there a link between vaccines and autism?. It is this argument that vaccination opponents often bring, and many mothers, fearing the development of an autistic spectrum disorder in a child, refuse vaccinations for the baby.

Data on 500,000 children were selected for the study. Their medical records were carefully studied by staff at the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen. The analysis showed that There is no connection between autism in children and vaccination refusal or consent.. The research results are officially published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The assumption that vaccinations could somehow affect the likelihood of an autistic spectrum in children was born in 1998. The author of the hypothesis is an old Briton Andrew Wakefield, who published his work. The work provided links to several cases of registration of autism in babies who received measles, rubella and infectious mumps vaccinations.

The work was immediately criticized by the scientific community because all Andrew children described autism symptoms appeared before vaccinations were given. Thus, vaccines cannot be considered the cause of the disease.

The Royal Medical Council of Great Britain on an emergency basis then requested data on all the cases described and revealed numerous inaccuracies, for example, Some of the children with autism have never been vaccinated, while the author of the study stated that they were given the vaccine. In response to the allegations of lying, Andrew Wakefield explained that he only urged not to put several vaccinations at once, but to use vaccines separately.

Of the total number of medical cards examined, Danish researchers found 6.5 thousand autistic children. Among them, the proportion of vaccinated and unvaccinated children was almost equal. This suggests that there is no correlation between vaccinations and autism spectrum disorder.

Previously, Danish scientists have already conducted a similar study, and its results were published as early as 2002.

Now that Europe is literally covered by measles outbreaks, it's time to talk about the problem again, the experts decided, and they took the latest data from children's medical examinations.

The researchers are worried about the fact that debunk a falsified study of 20 years ago was more difficult than you can imagine. Therefore, the scientists advised pediatricians to do this work - despite their busyness and workload, it is necessary to find time for every mother and father to tell where information about the connection between autism and vaccinations actually came from. This, according to researchers, should help reduce the number of anti-vaccines.