To wonder why on earth you would not vaccinate your DCs?

[olimpia]

I hear from another thread that some people choose not to vaccinate their DCs at all and I'm genuinely interested to hear why because I can't think of a single reason not to. I can perhaps understand opting out of the MMR if someone believes the bad press (not that I do) but all the other vaccinations? Why, oh why?
(not a troll! Just relatively new to MN)

Basically that study says any incidence is so small it cant really be measured but, true, you can't rule it out either. And, of course, how do we know if the disease prevented by vaccunation couldn't themselves be more of a trigger for autoimmune disease?

Yes, hmm, well the 'you can't rule it out either' (from a paper that is going to lean in favour of vaccinating - always going to be the case if published in the Lancet following peer review) is actually a bit of a 'hmmm' moment if YOU have a family history with a lot of autoimmune conditions. It's not hugely reassuring. Of course if your only brush with autoimmunity in the family is some distant cousin you've never met with a touch of type 1 diabetes then you might be reassured. If however, you have a family history with different autoimmune conditions cropping up repeatedly in close family AND an older child who regressed following an immune event (along with plenty of signs of an immune system that tends to dive straight into inflammatory responses) then it isn't quite so reassuring. The most it says is 'we don't know'.

You also can't rule out the disease the vaccine prevents being even more of a trigger for autoimmune condition, no?

No, you can't rule out the disease a vaccine prevents from being more of a trigger. Which is where the likelihood of catching the disease becomes relevant. And also the age of catching the disease.

Interesting:
www.arthritistoday.org/news/autism-autoimmune-disease.php

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981031181106.htm

www.jleukbio.org/content/80/1/1.full.pdf

Now ds1 regressed after a viral infection (not one that can be vaccinated against - it was herpes). And also, as an aside, showed signs of inflammation post vaccination. We have a family history of autoimmunity in multiple close relatives. Would you be introducing a virus a sibling might otherwise never meet in the first few years (a 'vulnerable and critical period of neurodevelopment' as the third paper puts it)? I'm also not that keen to introduce more than one virus at once - attenuated or not, for fairly obvious reasons (if there's a reaction I want to know what caused it).

Had a quick google of the German study. It was based on an Internet questionnaire! I mean, come on, seriously?

I HATE have to tick that box

www.arthritistoday.org/news/autism-autoimmune-disease.php

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981031181106.htm

www.jleukbio.org/content/80/1/1.full.pdf

The likelihood of catching a disease depends, all other thungs being equal, on how many others around you are immune ie herd immunity.

Well yes. But when you have one child you know will need 24 hour 1:1 care for the rest of his life, then you are hardly going to bounce straight in and offer up another child for some notion of herd immunity. Especially knowing that if it does go pear shaped then you will be the one picking up the pieces alone. Society doesn't in general make it easy to have a severely disabled child.

I'm never quote clear who 'herd immunity' is meant to protect, because it seems to always be some mythical child, that doesn't actually exist.

That BMJ paper I linked to above is interesting as it makes the point that responses to vaccinations alter/differ according to the sequence in which they're given, the age at which they're given and the sex of the recipient. This for example is a quote: In animal studies females have a stronger Th2 profile than males,w20 and this could be important for the response to live and inactivated vaccines.w19 For example, the beneficial effect of measles vaccine may be stronger for girls than for boys.5 w11 DTP after measles vaccine is associated with twofold higher mortality for girls but has little effect for boys.3 w27 Administration of vitamin A may amplify the negative effect of DTP for girls but may benefit boys.8 Hence, the optimal vaccination policies might have to differ for boys and girls. New vaccines should be examined for possible sex differences. Another quote What was once a good intervention may cease to provide a benefit because of such interactions. For example, when the timing of measles vaccine changed and DTP was administered after high titre measles vaccine,3 female mortality increased.

Now if we put that with this sort of thing together with this sot of thing www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-news/study-finds-children-autism-have-more-active-adaptive-immune-system it starts to become clear why knowing that a vaccination confers immunity to a specific disease for some (usually unknown) period of time doesn't make the decision any easier.

I would very much like to see an individual approach to vaccination - where the authorities think in terms of what will be the greatest benefit to the individual recipient, rather than what will benefit the population (usually calculated with an underestimate of the number of adverse reactions).

Autism aside and I believe it has not been proven to be autoimmune, no one knows that vaccinations triggers an AI reaction. There are theories but not one cause, so I'm afraid stating that vaccinations trigger autoimmune diseases is incorrect. It has been suggested that viruses and infections can trigger off diseases but you can't prevent getting ill. There is no one single factor that triggers off autoimmune disorders.

Of course but they haven't been linked with triggering off an AI reaction! So, it was just scaremongering. There are valid reasons to be concerned with vaxing but that's not what I was disagreeing with.

The study sample isn't very large.

And even for the RA, it was 5%. Therefore, not very significant and again, nothing we didn't know.

But it's just as likely to be triggered by an ear infection but in theory, yes, for your family maybe. Your blanket statement was wrong.

Again, making it clear I'm only discussing recognised autoimmune disorders but a normal childhood infection is just as likely to trigger off the disease. You are making massive assumptions.

Exactly. What's the comparison group? Kids who've had measles and pertussis or unvaccinated kids who due to herd immunity haven't had these diseases. Even compared with unvaccinated children who haven't been infected there's no difference, it would make total sense that the full blown disease, especially if there are complications will be more of a trigger than the vaccine. Talk about real Russian roulette!

Saintly. What don't you understand about herd immunity? It lowers the transmission of a disease in the community thereby lowering the probability of a non immune person contracting the disease.

If you can lower the transmission rate to a level where one hundred infected people transmit to less than one hundred other people, you may get localized outbreaks but the disease won't be endemic. The lower the number of people an infected person can infect (which depends on immunity due to either vaccination or natural infection, how contagious the disease and how much people mix with each other) the shorter the average transmission chain and the lower the probability that a non immune person will be infected. Perfect herd immunity means that you don't even get localized outbreaks because the probability of a transmission chain of more than one is negligible. But even without perfect herd immunity, some is still better than none.

Personally, if I had a child who couldn't be vaccinated for whatever reason, I'd be damn glad that other children are vaccinated - especially because it's likely that the children who react badly to vaccines are at higher risk of complications from e diseases they prevent. If you're doing a risk assessment then absolutely the probability of getting the disease should be a consideration.