Many Questions Remained Unanswered

Unfortunately the authors overlooked important, and already published, studies that indicate an association between vaccinations and atopic disorders. The Parsifal Study (1) established this association for the vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), and the study reported by Silverberg et al for varicella vaccination (2).

Many questions are still waiting to be answered:

• Why were the children in one of the groups unvaccinated (illness?), and how is it possible to expect any answers, considering their small number?
• Why was asthma (as the end point of the allergy patient’s “career”) not medically diagnosed?
• In unvaccinated individuals, no asthma cases occurred in those under the age of ten How can the authors state that the incidence is identical to that of vaccinated subjects?
• Why was the allergy rate among parents in the comparison groups not studied in a differentiated way?
• Why were the numbers and timings of vaccinations not included?

Vaccination after the 3^rd month of life with hexavalent vaccines plus pneumococci would disrupt the Th1–Th2 balance undoubtedly more than single tetanus vaccination in the 2^nd year of life. This balance is of crucial importance for the risk of allergies. However, all those who received any vaccinations were treated exactly the same in the study.

Finally, preventive measures in childhood should be expected to have a positive effect for people’s entire lifespans. However, it is apparent that some childhood diseases would reduce the incidence of tumor disease in adulthood (3) (mumps—ovarian cancer, varicella—glioblastoma). For this reason I think it is highly desirable to set up a healthcare commission that tests all preventive measures —not only vaccinations—for their evidence base and economic value, such as was stipulated in the Wuppertal manifesto of October 2010.

DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.2011.0696b

Dr. med. Monika Weber

Homöopathisch-Therapeutisches Praxis-Zentrum, München

mur.weber@arcor.de

Conflict of interest statement
The author declares that no conflict of interest exists.