Reactions to MMR - how long do they last?

[MrsMoppetMama]

My DD (13 months) had her MMR 11 days ago, she had a bad reaction after about 3 days (high temp and trouble breathing) and we took her to urgent care center. Although this has now passed, she seems to be really out of sorts and has stopped sleeping through. Her normal routine was brilliant as she went down from about 7 - 7. Now she is waking every two hours and is very unhappy. Is this normal? is this because of her MMR or is it just a phase? She has also stopped taking her bottle before bed, is it likely that she has weaned herself? Help! It's been pretty easy going with her up to now so a bit stressed by all this.

no apology then

And you never did respond to the Cervarix issue; nor to the issues raised above by saintly and Pagwatch. Would very much like to see those responses.

Bumbley
I'm assuming they're referring to secondary complications of measles as well. I'm sure the center for disease control have no reason to make things up.measles mortality is far far higher in poor countries, way beyond one in one thousand, to say nothing of permanent disability.

Too right I'd be scared if measles if my kids were unvaccinated. Your complacency is misplaced tabutha8. Measles can be fatal, death from thr mmr is so low as to be unquantifiable. So unless youre banking on herd immunity, its not rstional not to vaccinate. And 95% is not a magic number for herd immunity, it's not an all or nothing concept! A lot is better than a little but some is certainly better than none! Also, among the adult population, you get more herd immunity for a lower level of immune people because adults tend to mix less closely and with less other people than children.

Saintly. If a highly sensitive and highly specific test could be developed, then fabulous. I'm skeptical. I couldn't comment on specific markers but even if the theory were sound and accepted, surely you must see that sensitivity comes at the expense of specificity and that the effectivess of any screening test is also a function of how prevalent the condition is in the population. When it's rare, you'll end up with a LOT of the wrong children even if specificity is good.

Well, given this sort of research I think I'll sit it out until they either find markers (I find your "it can't be done so we may as well not bother looking and you may as well be vaccinated" quite extraordinary tbh) or they understand more about the immune dysregulation. Certainly for ds3 who, like his severely autistic brother, appears to be prone to inflammatory responses.

I would, btw, highly recommend you read Lucy Blackman's book. I have no idea why Paul Offit felt qualified to write about severe autism, as it is far from his area of expertise, but anyway. (Has he actually ever even met anyone with severe autism? Hmm I wonder). If you can't be bothered to read the book then [[http://sue-rubin0.tripod.com/Presentations/One%20Size%20Does%20Not%20Fit%20ALL%20TASH%20Connections%20Article.htm Sue Rubin's] short piece makes the same sort of points.She is not controversial as she types independently.

link again

And actually I find her piece fascinating as ds1's demonstrable cognitive skills have leapt forward massively in the 6 months or so that he has had the talker (and don't worry, he operates it all independently, we're not stupid delusional parents who can't accept the truth).

"death from thr mmr is so low as to be unquantifiable.

When you refuse to accept MMR as a cause that's an empty statement.

I never said it can't be done so don't bother, it's not my decision to make! I did say im skeptical any screening test could be developed. How would you get past the sensitivity/specificity issue? And surely you would equally need to have a screening test for the possibility of a reaction to the pathogen being vaccinated against? Or how would you weigh up the relative risk.

It's all very well demanding a test and accusing those who question whether a screening test could even be developed as not caring but how on earth would you do it, even assuming that markers even could be identified?

There's zero evidence that single vaccines are safer and in fact the mmr has been extensively studied, much more than the singles. So even if a test could be developed, you don't have a scientific basis for moving to singles.

Im delighted for you that your son is improving with his new treatment. That's great news.

"the mmr has been extensively studied"

Safety studies were inadequate, I believe the exact description of them is "wholly inadequate", while many of the popularly quoted population based studies are also agreed to be inadequate by the peer review community.

So that's not true either.

"There's zero evidence that single vaccines are safer"

There's a good deal of evidence that the risks of MMR are profoundly underestimated and underplayed (I'm sure you've taken on board what you've read about unreported reactions, dismissed, derided, ignored) so your insistence of relative risk assessments is empty, as they're impossible where the risk is unknown.

Er he's not improving with his new 'treatment' - he has a system to communicate now and so can demonstrate competence - have no idea whether it was there before or not - which is why I said 'demonstrable'. I'm sorry, I thought as you were recommending Paul Offit you would be familiar with the controversies of those with severe non-verbal autism demonstrating intelligence. He's as severely autistic/non-verbal now as he was yesterday.

Even cochrane described MMR safety studies as inadequate. The point with singles - the system I described above- is that susceptible children wouldn't have to receive the whole lot of vaccinations - only those particular vaccinations that were of benefit to them. I did explain that. They wouldn't have to take the risk for vaccinations of no benefit to them. I know you don't agree with individualising the vaccination programme and think families of damaged children should just suck it up (as they do, largely at the moment) but for those of us with likely susceptible children an individual approach would make more sense. Although, if you search, there are papers showing better immunity from singles versus MMR. And don't say I'm being rude - you haven't said anything in support of those vaccine damaged at all - other than to say it's so rare it doesn't matter.

There are papers showing unexpected interactions when giving other vaccinations in combination. Can't google right now as I'm on the iPad. Anyway I wouldn't give vaccinations in combination unless there was a very clear advantage (such as the DT? Where I might consider it) - because if you have given six shots at once and have a reaction you have no idea which bit even caused reaction. I know you believe reactions don't happen, or so rarely they're of no relevance, but I need to use my fingers to count the people I know whose kids have ended up in hospital after vaccination.

Brief google- one example of MMR versus monovalent measles I googled for monovalent measles assuming that if the three single jabs that would be the one associated with more side effects.

Elaine, it is the secondary complications that cause deaths from measles. Measles itself does not kill. I know that in developing countries the fatalities are much higher (due to malnutrition, less availability of treatment for complications etc) - that is why including those figures when you are calculating risk would skew them. Don't you think it is strange that the risk of dying from measles has gone from 1 in 10,000 in the 60s to 1 in 1,000 now?

Hi jimjams link not working

Yes that's weird isn't it. I think it let me read it by mistake first time around! And I shame as I wanted to go back and read it properly. It was a review of studies comparing the two. From my brief browse, didn't seem to be many studies comparing the two, and some of those were flawed and there were slightly more side effects noted with MMR (although follow up time was very limited anyway).

But I didn't read properly.

Never mind!

Agree with Acuracyrequired about wishing that our children could be exposed to mumps and german measles at a young age. Like in the olden days - when I was young, in fact.
If the gov't/health organisations are so concerned about measles, then they know what they have to do. Offer the single jab again. Not that I'd go for that, either, but I'm sure many would be very grateful.

You can have a single measles vaccine if you want but there's no reason for the taxpyer to foot the bill. Beyond theoretical speculation, there is no evidence that it is any safer than the mmr so there is no reason for the government to offer it. If you can get the measles vaccine just because you want it, then I should be able to get the chickenpox vaccine or the flu vaccine for free just because I want it - there's lots of evidence that it's safer to have the vaccine than the disease - but I still have to pay if I want it. In any case, if hte govt suddenly allowed single vaccines, I can just imagine the cries that they've known the MMR is dangerous all along. Noone would believe ' Well, there's no evidence to show that single vaccines are any safer than the MMR other than some theoretical speculation and there's no scientific evidence that the MMR causes autism but, nonetheless, we are going to offer single vaccines'. Wow, given the level of paranoia about vaccines, the reaction to that kind of statement would be very interesting.

I still don't see how any test for vaccine reaction would be developed. None of the posters who demanded why there is no test and said that it's not been done due to callousness and laziness have explained how you would actually roll out such a screeening test even assuming that these markers could be identified. No one has explained how you would deal with the sensitivity vs specificity issue. No one has explained whether you would need to develop at the same time a test to know the chances of a serious reaction to the wild disease (as you;d have to know the relative risk, right?). It's all very well demanding an elusive screening test but, as always, the devil is in the detail. Explain to me how it'll work, how many children who are perfectly fine to be vaccinated will be left unvaccinated due to false positives (it'll be a high number even with a test with relatively high specificity as the number of true positives in the population is very low) , how many false negatives you could accept, what you'd do about figuring out the relative risk. I'm interested.

"there's no reason for the taxpyer to foot the bill"

No reason that you accept. There are good reasons, in fact, if you read the research. "Theoretical speculation"? As you'll see from the links, it's more than that.

"I can just imagine the cries that they've known the MMR is dangerous all along." Well quite. It would be financially cataclysmic for governments and drug manufacturers around the world. This is the real reason, not the science.

There you go again with "paranoia". Have you read any of the links? That's just insulting.

"None of the posters who demanded why there is no test and said that it's not been done due to callousness and laziness have explained how you would actually roll out such a screeening test even assuming that these markers could be identified. No one has explained how you would deal with the sensitivity vs specificity issue. No one has explained whether you would need to develop at the same time a test to know the chances of a serious reaction to the wild disease (as you;d have to know the relative risk, right?). It's all very well demanding an elusive screening test but, as always, the devil is in the detail. Explain to me how it'll work"

Isn't that the point of research? I think we're all in favour of that.

"I'm interested" - I doubt that. If you were interested, you'd have taken seriously what people have said so far and read the links. The evidence of your posts suggests that hasn't been done.

Wow, given the level of paranoia about vaccines,......

But where does this paranoia come from? I have not heard of any paranoia about e.g. tetanus vaccination. It's worth asking why people have doubts, and trying to address their concerns, instead of saying 'Don't question - just do as we say.'

Does this questioning come from the feeling that 'we've heard this before'? We have seen drugs introduced and then whoops, there are side effects and they are withdrawn.

Elaine I'm suggesting that if the gov't/health organisations are really worried about measles, then they ought to offer the single jab. My thoughts are that the gov't/health organisations are actually not worried about measles. I happen to agree with them.

Tbh if they were really worried about measles every single parent in the country would have a basic idea about Vit A and its benefits. There'd be public health campaigns. So, yes, Tabitha. Agreed. They aren't - they're concerned about MMR.

Lavolcan.
Read bad science or autisms false prophets if you want to know a bit about the origins of the mmr paranoia.

Tabith8
Please show me a scientific study which shows that the single vaccine is safer (other than theoretical speculation). Then I'd agree with you.

I think the person who should be most concerned about measles is not the govt but the parent of an unvaccinated child.

Elaine: are you reading anything people have posted? Plainly not! Plenty for you to respond to but you've avoided doing so. It's like you read one book and decided you know everything!