Summary Statement : Study shows no link between autism and MMR complete study attached

Details : New British Study Shows No Relationship Between MMR Vaccine and Autism; What's Your Take?
According to a new British study just printed in the Archives of Disease in Childhood:
There is no evidence for a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) jab and autism.... MMR has been linked to the development of autism, following the publication in 1998 of research on 12 children, which has since been discredited.
The study compared 250 children born in 1990 or 1991. 98 of the children had an autism spectrum disorder: 52 had special educational needs, but no evidence of autism spectrum disorders; and 90 were developing normally. According to the press release,
All the children had been vaccinated against MMR, but not all of them had been given both doses.
Blood samples were taken, to check for the presence of persistent measles infection, or an abnormal immune response, indicated by circulating measles virus or increased antibody levels.

Results of the blood sample analysis showed that there was no difference in circulating measles virus or antibody levels between the two groups of children.

This finding was not affected by whether or not the child had received both MMR doses or whether or not they had regression.

Furthermore, there was no evidence of bowel symptoms (enterocolitis) among the autistic children, irrespective of whether or not they had regression.

Children who were autistic and those with special educational needs were less likely to receive the second dose of MMR, possibly reflecting parental concern about vaccination following the diagnosis of a developmental abnormality.

The authors point out that theirs is now the third, and largest, study that has failed to show a link between the MMR jab and autism.

As of today, the actual study, Measles vaccination and antibody response in autism spectrum disorders is available online. Here is the abstract as it is presented in the paper itself:
ABSTRACT
Objective: To test the hypothesis that measles vaccination was involved in the pathogenesis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) as evidenced by signs of a persistent measles infection or abnormally persistent immune response shown by circulating measles virus or raised antibody titres in children with ASD who had been vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) compared with controls.

Design: Case–control study, community based. Methods: A community sample of vaccinated children aged 10–12 years in the UK with ASD (n=98) and two control groups of similar age, one with special educational needs but no ASD (n=52) and one typically developing group (n=90), were tested for measles virus and antibody response to measles in the serum.

Results: No difference was found between cases and controls for measles antibody response. There was no dose–response relationship between autism symptoms and antibody concentrations. Measles virus nucleic acid was amplified by reverse transcriptase-PCR in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from one patient with autism and two typically developing children. There was no evidence of a differential response to measles virus or the measles component of the MMR in children with ASD, with or without regression, and controls who had either one or two doses of MMR. Only one child from the control group had clinical symptoms of possible enterocolitis.

Conclusion: No association between measles vaccination and ASD was shown.

Once again, I am guessing that those who support an MMR/autism connection will not be impressed.
Most people would, of course, agree, that the MMR does not cause autism in most children - or most children would be autistic. But many parents of children with autism say that their child's regression occured, quite literally, within hours of the MMR injection.

The question in many parents minds, then, remains: are some children predisposed to be more sensitive to the MMR than others? If so, is it the case that some children develop autistic symptoms as the result of the injection?

While this possibility does remain open, the study seems to address, head-on, the actual process by which Wakefield and others claim the MMR causes autism. The study specifically notes that measles virus was not circulating in the bloodstream after the injection, and that only one of the children with autism showed any bowel or gastrointestinal problem (compared to two children in the control groups).