Asthma and Vaccines May be Linked in a New study

Although experts stress that further research is required to corroborate the findings, the researchers may have discovered a connection between asthma and aluminum in vaccines. Many scientists have questioned whether aluminum, a long-used vaccine ingredient, is connected to children's allergies and asthma. Even though a recent study with federal funding discovered a potential connection, experts claim the report has many flaws and should not be used to alter current immunization recommendations. According to Dr. Matthew Daley, the study's principal author, even if a connection were to be discovered, the life-saving advantages of the immunizations would probably still outweigh the risk of developing asthma. But he said it's feasible that new work to establish vaccinations may be inspired if the results are validated. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Dr. Paul Offit is concerned that the poor study would unnecessarily scare some families away from effective immunizations. Offit stated, "Making an extraordinary claim requires an extraordinary body of proof." This study does not provide that kind of proof, he claimed. He and other outside specialists pointed out that Daley and his associates could not account for the impact of different potentially significant routes of exposure to aluminum in young people, such as the air or nutrition. Inconsistencies in the results that are difficult to explain, such as why additional aluminum exposure in one subset of thousands of fully immunized children did not appear to be associated with a higher chance of developing asthma, were also noticed. Officials from the CDC stated that it seems that immunizations containing aluminum "do not account for the general patterns that we find." According to the study published on Tuesday, young children who received the majority or all of the necessary doses of aluminum-containing vaccines had a 36% higher risk of developing chronic asthma than children who received fewer doses. Since the 1930s, several vaccinations have included aluminum as an adjuvant, a chemical that stimulates a higher immune response. According to American regulations, children should receive vaccinations against 15 diseases before 2. For seven of them, aluminum adjuvants are present in the vaccines. Adjuvants made of aluminum have long been regarded as secure and efficient. However, for 30 years, beginning about 1980, scientists noticed an increase in the prevalence of allergies and asthma in American children, and some wondered if there was a relationship. (These rates leveled off starting around ten years ago and have considerably decreased in recent years for unclear reasons.) Earlier research failed to discover a connection between children's immunizations containing aluminum and allergies or asthma. However, other studies have connected aluminum in industrial settings to asthma. Additionally, animals given aluminum injections experience an immunological response that results in the same kind of airway inflammation as asthma in children. Daley, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, stated that there is a potential danger that the aluminum in vaccinations could affect allergy risk based on what he considered to be preliminary animal studies.