When a measles outbreak was released three months ago in California, a state where many families reluctant to vaccinate their children live, the debate about vaccines was revived and how dangerous they can be. One of the problems that most concern parents who do not vaccinate and that was the cause of the anti-vaccine movement to grow exponentially was the Wakefield case, the false study in which the triple viral vaccine (measles, rubella and mumps) was linked ) with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Years later it was shown that everything was an invention of Wakefield, which after publishing the study announced that it was investigating to create measles vaccines that did not produce autism (it was not really anti-vaccines, but a fuss). The belief that vaccines are the cause of the disorder is still standing, so today we bring you a new study done with children without ASD with siblings without ASD, children without ASD with older siblings with ASD and children with ASD with siblings with ASD, vaccinated and unvaccinated from the viral triple, which answers the question: Does the triple viral vaccine cause autism?
Study Data
The study I am talking about is recently published and interesting because it handles an incredible sample of 95,727 children with older siblings. Of the total, 994 were diagnosed with ASD and 1929 had an older brother with ASD. Of these 1929, 134 also had ASD. That is, the bulk of children did not suffer from the disorder, nor did their siblings and the groups with the disorder were divided into children with ASD with siblings without disorder, children without ASD with siblings who did, and children with ASD with siblings who also They had it.
All children were visited between 2001 and 2012 and some received the 2 doses of the viral triple, others only one and others none. They crossed the data of the unvaccinated with those who took one or two doses and saw if there were differences between them at the time of being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. In theory, if the vaccine were related, vaccinated children would suffer more, and this would probably occur more strongly in high-risk cases, which are those in which children already have a brother with ASD (the fact of giving them the vaccine should be a trigger).
Results of the study
However, what was found in the study was not this. Vaccination rates in children with unaffected older siblings were 84% at 2 years of age and 92% at 5 years. When the brother had ASD the rates were 73% at 2 years and 86% at 5 years, data that seem to confirm that some parents did believe that the vaccine was related to the disorder and therefore did not vaccinate young children .
When evaluating the data they saw that the fact receiving the triple viral vaccine was not associated with an increased risk of ASD at 2 or 5 years. It was also not seen that children with siblings affected with autism spectrum disorder suffered more from being vaccinated than from not getting vaccinated.
From this it is concluded that there is no association between the viral triple vaccine, also known as MMR, measles, rubella and mumps and autism spectrum disorder, neither in the children with little risk of being diagnosed nor in the children with something risk for having a brother with ASD.
But ... are vaccines effective?
Since from the outbreak we published many entries related to vaccines, we were able to talk with some parents who opposed them, both here and in Xataka. One of the arguments that surprised me was that "ok, because they do not give autism, but they are still a business because vaccines have not proven effective," which is one of many arguments against them, because each answer knocking down an argument A new one accompanies you. Something like:
- Vaccines cause autism.
- No, it's not true, it's proven no.
- Well, they don't do anything.
- No, it is not true, they are effective.
- Well, children who are vaccinated have worse health.
- No, it's not true, the studies that talk about it are terribly wrong.
- Well…
Well, I'm going to stay in the second argument because in one of many discussions someone came to say that, in fact, the measles vaccine only protected people for 2 years, and then they were left unprotected. Obviously I told him that this was impossible, because if that were the case, measles outbreaks would be continued and the infections would be very numerous. But as sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, then I leave you with a graphic that shows very clearly the impact the vaccine had on the disease In the US, that is, how the number of measles cases declined as more and more people and children were vaccinated:
They are cases per 100,000 inhabitants and the vertical line marks the moment when the vaccine begins to be applied. Are there differences between the left and right side of the graph? Well, you already have two answers to two big questions: the measles vaccine is effective in controlling the disease and no, it does not cause autism spectrum disorder.
