Vaccine safety

Pediatrics for Parents, Sept, 2003

Each time your child receives a vaccination, you are given a release to sign and a page explaining about the vaccine and its potential side effects. Sometimes the warnings are enough to make a parent reconsider. A recent study should lessen any parent's concerns.

A review of nearly seven million vaccinations given by HMOs between 1991 and 1997 found only five children who had vaccine-related anaphylactic reactions, the most serious type of reaction. An anaphylactic reaction may be as mild as hives or as severe as trouble breathing due to swelling of the trachea (wind pipe).

Four of the children received multiple vaccinations. The child who reacted after receiving only one vaccination had received the MMR. The other vaccines implicated were hepatitis B (two children), diphtheria-tetanus (one child), diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (three children), Haemophilus influenzae type b (three children), and the oral polio vaccine (three children}. The total number of reactions is greater than five since most of the children who reacted had received more than one vaccine.

All five of the children were treated in the emergency room. Three required medications; the other two didn't. None died.

Based on these results, the researchers estimated that the vaccine that caused the most reactions was the DTP at about 21 per million doses. Next came MMR at 3.5 reactions per million doses, followed by the combination DTP-Hib combination with 3.4 reactions per million. The researchers cautioned that these estimates may be high.

The importance of this study is that the number of reactions to vaccinations is very low, and, at least in this large study, none were life-threatening or resulted in the child dying. The risks of not receiving the vaccines are much greater than the risks from having the vaccines.

Family Practice News, 7/1/03