Awesome news about autism and MMR

[Anonymous]

This isn't to reintroduce the debate, but I think this is a WONDERFUL scientific advance on this issue. Here's an article about it:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/120236.php

and here's the original article:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003140

the beauty about this study is that it is openly accessible. Have a read for yourself, see what could have done better. The study is extremely well controlled, blinded, done independently 3x on different continents. It does not get more rigorous than that (although the case numbers could have been larger). Isn't it telling that the study authors couldn't find more children who correspond to the mythical conception of the AoA editors of "a typically developing child who then gets MMR and then regresses" especially since most of their autistic study population were indeed children who had regressed (Cases had a high rate of CPEA-defined behavioral regression (loss of language and/or other skills following acquisition), 88%, compared to published rates of 20–40% for the general ASD population).

This study, albeit small (still more than twice as large as Wakefield's), is beautifully done and 100% unambiguous.

I hope this makes people feel safer about the MMR. Now, it's not to say I *love* the vaccine schedule as it is, because I don't, and I will spread them out with my new baby. BUT, I think the measles thing is quite comforting.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for posting the research. I believe that this should allay fears of MMR connection to autism. The biopsies are pretty direct evidence to the contrary.

Combined with the California study that found no relationship between autism and mercury preservatives in vaccines, the link between vaccinations and autism does not really have scientific evidence behind it.

I hope that the public can regain confidence in vaccination, and that we can concentrate autism research in other directions that may bear more fruit.

[Anonymous]

I don't know--35 is a really small sample size, and doesn't rule out some kind of relationship even if it's not causal. I think a lot more research needs to be done and so, evidently, does NIH: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-08-257.html

[Anonymous]

Yes, but these were 35 biopsies. They couldn't find evidence of infection in anyone, except for one test and one control. So all the other autistics didn't show evidence of infection in the intestines at all, which really throws a wrench in the hypothesis.

[Anonymous]

PP here. Also, I do not think that NIH program announcement was about autism.