Influenza vaccination doesn’t cause autism – health

There is no association between flu vaccination during pregnancy and the occurrence of autism spectrum disorder in children. Researchers from a Swedish team have now come to this conclusion studypublished in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

To this end, the scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm followed the development of 70,000 small children from seven regions of Sweden who were born between October 2009 and September 2010. About 40,000 of them had their mother vaccinated with the influenza vaccine during pregnancy. They describe that 1 percent of the children of the vaccinated mothers later had an autism spectrum disorder – as did 1.1 percent of the children of non-vaccinated mothers.

Genetic predisposition is crucial

From this they conclude that the genetic component is the main one in autism. Commenting on the research in an editorial, epidemiologist Anders Hviid said, “We know that autism has a strong genetic component and that no credible science supports the view that vaccines given in pregnancy (or in childhood) can cause autism . “

Flu vaccines given during pregnancy protect the health of both mother and child. The probability of a difficult pregnancy and a higher risk of stillbirth and premature birth, on the other hand, is high in those pregnant women who contract the flu.

Another study came to a similar conclusion. This analyzed the side effects that can occur with 57 vaccines and categorized them as “not significant”.