Does vaccination protect children from allergic diseases?

Among most parents, there is a belief that vaccination increases the risk of allergic diseases in children, “increases the allergy of the body”, and in those who already suffer from allergies, symptoms worsen.< /p>

Nevertheless, research data does not confirm these concerns, and on the contrary, they testify to the protective effect of vaccination against allergic diseases.

The author of the latest study in this area, Olf Herbarth, MD, and his colleagues compared the incidence and severity of allergic diseases among vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

The results showed that those who were vaccinated developed allergies less often than those who were not vaccinated.

This was observed even when comparing groups of children with existing allergic diseases.

The results of this study were presented at the World Allergy Organization international scientific conference held recently in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

Dr. Herbarth and colleagues studied three groups in which 2,187 children between the ages of 5 and 6 participated. The data for the first group were taken from a cross-sectional study of children born in 1988-89.

The information for the second was from a multicenter study of children born in 1994-95. And the data for the third group were takenfrom a study of children with an increased risk of developing atopic disease, based on the presence of a family history of atopy in the parents.

The authors of these studies ascertained the vaccinations of each of the participants by conducting a conversation with the parents, by the certificates for vaccinations and by the titers of immunoglobulins to the pathogens against which the vaccines protect.

Dr. Herbarth and his colleagues analyzed the data from the three studies in detail and found the surprising fact that the frequency of allergic diseases was inversely proportional to the number of immunizations given to the children. And the fewer immunizations the child had, the greater the risk of him getting an allergy.

The pooled analysis then found, for example, that atopic dermatitis or eczema occurred in 22.1% of the vaccinated and 29.6% of the unvaccinated.

The most common symptoms of other allergic diseases were observed in 38.9% of unvaccinated children against 32.7% of vaccinated children.

Even in the group of children with a high risk of developing atopic dermatitis /eczema/ due to the presence of allergic diseases in the parents, the vaccination reduced the overall risk of the appearance of allergy symptoms by 26%. and the risk of developing eczema by 34% compared to unvaccinated children.

These ratios remained unchanged even after accounting for such confounding factors as tobacco smoking during pregnancy and exposure to household allergens.

Despite the obvious surprise of the final results obtained from the general analysis of the three groups of children, they are fully consistent with the “hygiene hypothesis” explaining the sharp jump in allergic diseases in the 20th century.

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Paul Offit, MD pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, USA, a world-renowned expert on vaccine prevention states:

“If you look at children in developing countries who live in environments where even minimal hygiene standards are sometimes not met and are exposed to a much higher risk of contracting parasitic and infectious diseases from an early age, you will see that they suffer from allergic diseases much less often than those growing up in developed countries. “