Study finds no drawbacks to combination vaccines for children

Contrary to the fears of some parents, a 10-year study by Danish researchers found no evidence that combination vaccines, such as the measles, mumps and rubella shot, weakened children’s immune system.

The study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tracked 805,206 children born in Denmark.

Many parents have felt uneasy about vaccine safety since 2002, when the federal Institute of Medicine concluded that “multiple antigen” vaccines could theoretically overstimulate the body’s immune system, leaving it more – not less – vulnerable to disease.

The new study found no increased rate of pneumonia, diarrhea, blood infections, and viral or bacterial infections of the nervous system.

The study “should be reassuring to parents,” said Dr. Margaret Rennels, a pediatrics professor at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study.

The Danish researchers, led by Anders Hviid, an epidemiologist at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut, followed all children born in Denmark between 1990 and 2001 who received a number of common vaccines against infectious diseases, including measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR, Haemophilus influenza type b, or Hib, and oral poliovirus.