Complete Article:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/09/autism-and-meas.html
Autism and measles vaccine: no link found -- again
12:24 PM, September 4, 2008
Suspicion that autism is triggered by childhood vaccinations --
notably the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine -- lingers on, even
though studies repeatedly fail to find such a link. Another of those
was published online today in the Public Library of Science ONE --
which allows full access after publication, so you can read the entire
re****t here.
Led by scientists at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public
Health, the research team took bowel tissue samples from 25 children
with autism who had gut disturbances and compared it to bowel tissue
of 11 children who also had such disturbances but did not have autism.
The researchers screened the tissue for presence of the genetic
material of the measles virus to see if the virus persisted more often
in the children who had developed autism. Three labs examined the
tissue independently, and no one knew which tissue came from autistic
or non-autistic children until after the results were in. In all three
labs, only two of the samples showed traces of the measles virus. One
was from a child in the autism group and one was from a child without
autism.
In other words, children with autism were no more likely to have
measles virus in their tissue than ones who did not have autism, and
that doesn't sup****t a MMR-autism causal link, the authors concluded.
The scientists also investigated the tem****al relation****p you'd
expect if the vaccine-autism theory were true. If the vaccine caused
gut symptoms/autism, you'd expect the vaccine timing to precede either
of the other two. This wasn't found.
Why did the researchers do this? The MMR-autism theory stems from a
1998 re****t by a British surgeon, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, that 12
children with autism and gastrointestinal disturbances had traces of
the measles virus in their gut tissue. (The MMR vaccine uses a live,
attenuated version of the measles virus.) Wakefield's theory was that
the virus attacked the gut and caused autism. (Ten of the 13 authors
of the paper, which was published in the Lancet, later retracted their
author****p; you can read more about the Wakefield paper and subsequent
controversy here and here.)
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