American Study Shows the Association between MMR and Autism

According to the American study conducted by Arthur Krigsman, of New York University School of Medicine found that MMR vaccine has links to autism. MMR inoculation is given to young children to protect themselves against measles, mump and rubella. But recently there have been claims that the vaccine is linked to autism. After this there was sharp fall in the MMR vaccine uptake rate which has indirectly increased the prevelance of measles. Previously the same link was established by the studies conducted by Andrew Wakefield, gastroenterologist.

He suggested that MMR should be avoided and in turn single vaccinations should be encouraged. He published his study in the journal The Lancet in 1998 after he detected traces of the measles virus in the guts of 12 children with autism. But the recent study conducted by Arthur Krigsman involved 275 autistic children. Out of which 70 cases showed evidence of the measles virus while performing biopsies of gut tissue. Steve Walker, assistant professor at Wake Forest University Medical Centre, North Carolina, also said that these children were diagnosed with autism and suffered from serious digestive problems for which no explanation could be found. The study is being presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Montreal and is yet to be published in a scientific journal. But other researchers examined the link between MMR and autism and found no evidence to back it.