The global prevalence of allergic diseases is skyrocketing, affecting
30% to 40% of
the world’s population. Allergic conditions include food allergies,
anaphylaxis, asthma, eczema, allergic rhinitis,
…an escalating
number of children have been hospitalized for food allergies or have
visited an emergency department for primarily food-related anaphylaxis
over the past couple of decades.
In the U.S., food allergies are widespread and are the most common cause of
anaphylaxis in children.
One in 13 American children—about two per classroom—has at least one food allergy, and food allergies increased by
50% from 1997 to 2011. An analysis of New York City school system data showed that the incidence of
epinephrine administration for severe food allergy increased threefold from 2007 to 2013. Likewise, an escalating number of children have been
hospitalized for food allergies or have visited an
emergency department for primarily food-related anaphylaxis over the past couple of decades. Similar
trends are playing out all over the world.
As each new decade ushers in higher
childhood allergy rates, researchers mostly have scratched their heads,
citing the poorly operationalized “
hygiene hypothesis”
or feebly asserting that the reasons for the increase remain “unclear.”
A few investigators have pointed to possible risk factors such as
cesarean delivery and novel food technologies. However, given that the
hallmark of allergic disease is an altered
immune response, it stands to reason that vaccines— which purposefully set out to “
reprogram immunity”—are major contenders as allergy triggers.
A Perfect Storm
In her 2011 book,
The Peanut Allergy Epidemic,
Heather Fraser assembles persuasive scientific and historical evidence
that lays the blame for the mass peanut allergy phenomenon (and the
steep rise in childhood allergies of all types) on the “extensive and
sudden” changes made to childhood vaccine programs in the U.S. and
elsewhere in the late 1980s. According to Fraser, a series of critical
factors synergistically converged during this time period to create a
perfect storm and launch the allergy and chronic illness epidemics that
have been ongoing ever since. These factors include:
- Abrupt and massive expansion of the childhood vaccine schedule: In the U.S., the schedule went from three recommended vaccines in the mid-1980s to fifteendifferent vaccines currently.
- Initiation of vaccination on the day of birth: This includes both the hepatitis B vaccine and synthetic vitamin K injection.
- Changes in vaccine technology: Changes include production of recombinant(genetically engineered) vaccines and conjugate vaccines
(which couple a weak vaccine antigen to a protein carrier), both of
which actively go after “immunologic memory” and non-antibody immune
response.
- Vastly increased use of aluminum adjuvants, which stimulate a stronger immune response that can easily veer into the realm of “immune dysregulation.”
- Increased vaccine coverage: Only about half of American two-year-olds in the late 1980s had completed their recommended series of vaccines, but a decade later, about nine in ten 19-35-month-olds were receiving all or most recommended vaccines.
…vaccinated children had a significantly greater odds of having a diagnosed allergic condition compared to unvaccinated children
A study conducted in 2012 and published in
2017 in the
Journal of Translational Sciencecompared
chronic health problems in vaccinated and unvaccinated
6-to-12-year-olds—in other words, children born between 2000 and 2006.
The results lend credence to Fraser’s thinking about vaccination and
allergy trends. Among many striking results, the authors found that
vaccinated children had a significantly greater odds of having a
diagnosed allergic condition compared to unvaccinated children: 10.4%
versus 0.4% for allergic rhinitis, 22.2% versus 6.9% for “other”
allergies and 9.5% versus 3.6% for eczema and other forms of atopic
dermatitis. Other studies also have linked vaccines to
atopic conditions and allergic sensitization.
Allergy as an inevitable response to vaccination
To grasp how the chain of
vaccine-related events initiated roughly 30 years ago has bred today’s
worldwide allergy epidemics, one has to understand that vaccines, by
their very nature, induce an unnatural immune response. This property of
vaccines is called “immunogenicity.” Pharmaceutical researchers note
that it can be tricky to achieve “wanted” immunogenicity while avoiding
“unwanted” immune responses that later result in “
clinically adverse consequences.”
Considering this question, Fraser calls attention to an important 1991
paper in
The Quarterly Review of Biology that
put forth the plausible view of allergy as an evolutionary form of
immunological defense against “commonly allergenic” toxins, including
metals and carcinogens. From this perspective, allergy symptoms (such as
vomiting, sneezing and decreased blood pressure) are logical bodily
responses intended to expel toxic substances or slow their circulation
in the body.
Fraser elegantly connects vaccines to
this view of allergy as an evolved immunological response to toxins. She
and other writers have pointed out that awareness of the association
between injected toxins and allergic reactions goes back to at least
the
early 20th century,
when a French physiologist coined the term “anaphylaxis” to describe
what happened to a dog injected twice with a hive-inducing marine toxin;
the dog died within minutes of the second injection, administered three
weeks after the first.
Later, a 1940s study described how
tetanus vaccine could induce allergy in humans. In fact, the medical literature is replete with terms such as “
bystander effects” and vaccine-induced allergic responses to “
non-target antigens,”
all of which describe vaccines’ almost guaranteed ability to produce
unwanted immunogenicity in the form of allergy. Notwithstanding the fact
that vaccines also contain a plethora of worrisome
ingredients—“immunogens,
preservatives, adjuvants, antibiotics and manufacturing by-products” in
addition to carrier proteins and live or inactivated viruses and
toxins—Fraser believes that vaccines’ skewing of the immune system as a
whole is the most significant contributor to subsequent allergy.
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The era of food
allergy began with the post-millennial generation, the same faction who
received new immunizations during early childhood.
Because of its powerful
immune-stimulating effects, aluminum is the one vaccine ingredient that
perhaps should be singled out for its pivotal role in creating
allergies. As one research group recently
noted,
aluminum adjuvants induce “Th2 responses to coadministered antigens and
potentially to unrelated environmental allergens, thus providing
bystander…responses that contribute to allergic disease.” The
probability of sensitization may be even greater with simultaneous
administration of
multiplealuminum-containing vaccines. Another
study from
2016 bluntly stated: “The era of food allergy began with the
post-millennial generation, the same faction who received new
immunizations during early childhood. Many of these vaccines contain
alum, an adjuvant known to induce allergic phenotypes.”
A recent
case report measured
serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels in two children before and after
the children received aluminum-containing vaccines. (IgE are the immune
system antibodies that, together with histamine-storing white blood
cells called mast cells, “
contribute substantially to
disease development, progression and…pathology in many people afflicted
with…allergic disorders.”) In both cases, children’s levels of total
IgE and food allergen-specific IgE increased following vaccination.
In another aluminum-related
study,
64 Swedish children who received diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP)
vaccines containing aluminum adjuvants experienced persistent
vaccine-induced itching nodules (with a median duration of five years),
and 95% developed a contact allergy to aluminum.
As if the rise of food and other allergies were not bad enough, studies are documenting a qualitative shift in the “
natural history”
of food allergy toward a “more frequently…persistent rather
than…transient” condition. Moreover, dangerous manifestations of allergy
such as anaphylaxis may be even more widespread than we know, because
anywhere from 21% to 57% of cases of anaphylaxis are
misclassified and
given a less severe diagnostic code. As a result, children’s quality of
life suffers, and once-rare items like epinephrine autoinjectors are
becoming a fixture at schools and
summer camps.
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