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Previous Volume 347:1477-1482 November 7, 2002 Number 19 Next

	Full Text PDF PDA Full Text PowerPoint Slide Set Perspective by Campion, E. W. Letters Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited PubMed Citation

ABSTRACT

Background It has been suggested that vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) is a cause of autism.

Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all children born in Denmark from January 1991 through December 1998. The cohort was selected on the basis of data from the Danish Civil Registration System, which assigns a unique identification number to every live-born infant and new resident in Denmark. MMR-vaccination status was obtained from the Danish National Board of Health. Information on the children's autism status was obtained from the Danish Psychiatric Central Register, which contains information on all diagnoses received by patients in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics in Denmark. We obtained information on potential confounders from the Danish Medical Birth Registry, the National Hospital Registry, and Statistics Denmark.

Results Of the 537,303 children in the cohort (representing 2,129,864 person-years), 440,655 (82.0 percent) had received the MMR vaccine. We identified 316 children with a diagnosis of autistic disorder and 422 with a diagnosis of other autistic-spectrum disorders. After adjustment for potential confounders, the relative risk of autistic disorder in the group of vaccinated children, as compared with the unvaccinated group, was 0.92 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.68 to 1.24), and the relative risk of another autistic-spectrum disorder was 0.83 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.65 to 1.07). There was no association between the age at the time of vaccination, the time since vaccination, or the date of vaccination and the development of autistic disorder.

Conclusions This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism.

Source Information

From the Danish Epidemiology Science Center, Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Århus, Denmark (K.M.M., M.V., P.T., J.O.); the Danish Epidemiology Science Center, Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark (A.H., J.W., M.M.); and the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta (D.S.).

Address reprint requests to Dr. Madsen at the Danish Epidemiology Science Center, Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine, Vennelyst Blvd. 6, DK-8000, Aarhus C, Denmark, or at kmm{at}dadlnet.dk.

Full Text of this Article

Related Letters:

Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism
Spitzer W. O., Mullins M. E., Wakefield A. J., Noble K. K., Miyasaka K., Madsen K. M., Campion E. W.
Extract | Full Text | PDF  
N Engl J Med 2003; 348:951-954, Mar 6, 2003. Correspondence

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