A sweeping evaluation of well being information from greater than 1.2 million kids in Denmark born over a 24-year interval discovered no hyperlink between the small quantities of aluminum in vaccines and a variety of well being situations—together with bronchial asthma, allergy symptoms, eczema, autism, and a focus deficit-hyperactivity dysfunction (ADHD).
The discovering, printed within the Annals of Inner Drugs, firmly squashes a persistent anti-vaccine speaking level that can provide vaccine-hesitant dad and mom pause.
Small quantities of aluminum salts have been added to vaccines for many years as adjuvants, that’s, parts of the vaccine that assist drum up protecting immune responses towards a goal germ. Aluminum adjuvants will be present in a wide range of vaccines, together with these towards diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae kind b (Hib), and hepatitis A and B.
Regardless of many years of use worldwide and no clear hyperlink to harms, concern about aluminum and cumulative exposures regularly resurfaces—largely because of anti-vaccine advocates who fearmonger concerning the aspect. A pacesetter of such voices is Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the present US well being secretary and an ardent anti-vaccine advocate.
In a June 2024 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Kennedy falsely claimed that aluminum is “extraordinarily neurotoxic” and “give[s] you allergy symptoms.” The podcast has racked up almost 2 million views on YouTube. Likewise, Youngsters’s Well being Protection, the rabid anti-vaccine group Kennedy created in 2018, has additionally made wild claims concerning the security of aluminum adjuvants. That features linking it to autism, regardless of that many high-quality scientific research have discovered no hyperlink between any vaccines and autism.
Whereas anti-vaccine advocates like Kennedy routinely dismiss and assault the plethora of research that don’t help their harmful claims, the brand new research ought to reassure any hesitant dad and mom.
Clear information, unclear future
For the research, lead writer Niklas Worm Andersson, of the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, and colleagues tapped into Denmark’s nationwide registry to investigate medical information of over 1.2 million kids born within the nation between 1997 and 2018. Throughout that point, new vaccines have been launched and suggestions shifted, creating variation in what number of aluminum-containing vaccines kids obtained.
