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  • Epidemiology of Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders
  • Published:

Autism and MMR vaccination in North London; no causal relationship

Molecular Psychiatry volume 7, pages S7–S8 (2002)Cite this article

The first public suggestion of a link between MMR vaccine and autism was made on a Danish television programme in 1993, by the mother of a child with autism. Although no epidemiological or biological evidence of a causal link was found in a subsequent investigation undertaken in 1994 by the Danish Department of Epidemiology at the National Statens Serum Institute, the hypothesis caught on, particularly among parents’ groups. Lawyers became interested.

Vaccination and vaccine safety are issues of major concern to the public, their elected representatives and all health care workers. Possible adverse reactions to vaccines attract considerable attention from various pressure groups and from the media, with important and possibly catastrophic effects on public confidence in immunisations and on vaccine-uptake. In 1998, Wakefield and others published a case series of 12 children referred with bowel symptoms to a tertiary paediatric gastroenterology unit.1 Nine of the children had autistic spectrum disorders including one with Asperger's syndrome, one had disintegrative psychosis, two had possible post viral/vaccinial encephalitis. In eight of the 12, the parents or the child's doctor associated the onset of the child's condition with the MMR vaccine, with a mean interval between vaccination and recalled onset of symptoms of 6.4 days, range 1–14. This paper and earlier work from the same group, suggesting an association between measles-containing vaccinations and inflammatory bowel disease2 (work not confirmed in their subsequent studies3,4), received considerable media attention with an ongoing adverse effect on vaccination rates in the United Kingdom where overall MMR uptake has fallen from 92% in 1997 to 84% in 2001. Many children are now at risk of measles, mumps and rubella and the possibility of eradication of measles has been seriously delayed.

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References

  1. Wakefield AJ et al. Lancet 1998 351: 637–641

  2. Thompson NP et al. Lancet 1995 345: 1071–1074

  3. Morris DL et al. Gut 1997 41 (Suppl 3): A37

  4. Chadwick N et al. J Med Virol 1998 55: 305–311

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  8. Fombonne E . Pediatrics 2001 107: 411–412

  9. Gershon M . Testimony to the Congress of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform: Hearing on ‘The challenges of autism. Why the increased rates? A one year update’ Washington. April 2001 http://www.house.gov/reform/hearings/healthcare/01.04.25/gershon.htm

  10. Wakefield AJ . Ibid http://www.house.gov/reform/hearings/healthcare/01.04.25/wakefield.htm

  11. Taylor B et al. Brit Med J 2002 324: 393–396

  12. Fombonne E, Chakrabarti S . Pediatrics 2001 108: e58

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Community Child Health, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, UK

    B Taylor, R Lingam, A Simmons & J Stowe

  2. Immunisation Division, Public Health Laboratory Service, Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, London, UK

    E Miller & N Andrews

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  1. B Taylor
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  2. R Lingam
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  3. A Simmons
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  4. J Stowe
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  5. E Miller
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  6. N Andrews
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Correspondence to B Taylor.

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Taylor, B., Lingam, R., Simmons, A. et al. Autism and MMR vaccination in North London; no causal relationship. Mol Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 2), S7–S8 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001163

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