Why There Is no Link Between Measles Virus and Autism

A report published in the Lancet in 1998 described the case histories of 12 previously normal children who developed symptoms of autism or inflammatory bowel disease after having received the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine [1]. This paper formed the basis for Andrew Wakefield’s subsequent claim to have identified a new type of gastrointestinal disease, termed autistic enterocolitis. Despite never explicitly asserting a link between the MMR vaccine and this supposedly new, regressive form of autism, the paper sparked a ma‐ jor health scare in the United Kingdom. It is probable that the uncertainty and controversy surrounding the relationship between measles and autism contributed to the fact that in 2004/05, about 1.9 million school children and 300,000 pre-school children were recorded as incompletely vaccinated against measles in England, including more than 800,000 children completely unvaccinated. Based on this, approximately 1.3 million children aged 2-17 years were susceptible to measles [2]. In 2006, a 13-year old boy, who had not received the MMR vaccine, became the first person in the UK for 14 years to die of measles and as a result of almost a decade of low MMR vaccination coverage across the UK, by 2008 the disease had once again become endemic.