Those who know me know that I suffer from life long eczema. I am fully vaccinated. But I didn’t blame it on vaccines.
My daughter is fully vaccinated. She was breastfed and given formula milk (although I continued to breastfeed her until she was 2 years old). But so far, despite undergoing full vaccination, she did not develop eczema.
Why didn’t my daughter get eczema if it is true that vaccines (or formula milk or GMO-based food) causes it?
About 90 – 99% of Malaysian children are vaccinated – but only 8.5% of children have eczema. If vaccines truly cause eczema – shouldn’t eczema rates be higher?
Eczema is caused by a myriad of factors – not just vaccines. One can develop eczema due to reaction to cleaning products, hot weather, allergenic food, atopy in the family, air pollution – the list is long.
Can childhood vaccines cause or exacerbate eczema?
Parents of children with allergies, asthma or atopic eczema often ask this question. This worry is normal as eczema involves the body’s immune system. Parents worry that by vaccinating – we can damage a child’s immune system. There are also parental reports of children developing eczema after vaccines.
Vaccines do not cause eczema. Rarely for some children, their eczema may flare up after immunizations. Doctors giving immunization to children with eczema should warn parents of this possibility. Parents should be counselled on common adverse events from immunization (AEFI) that they can develop. Commonest AEFI that can occur are local skin reactions – skin swelling or redness at the injection on site. These reactions are common and should be anticipated. These local reactions are considered as ‘hypersensitivity reactions’. These skin reactions are not considered as allergies and should not contradict against further doses with the same vaccine.
Can my child with eczema be vaccinated?
Most children with eczema can have all their vaccinations (including MMR). This includes children who have not eaten egg and children who have a family member with an egg allergy. If your child who with eczema needs to be vaccinated, just make sure the doctor or nurse avoid areas where the skin is already sore, inflamed or broken. When two or more injections are required at once, these should ideally be given in different limbs.
Has anyone ever proven vaccines causes eczema?
So far, there is no concrete evidence that any vaccines cause eczema. There are a lot of contradicting results from different studies that either support or does not support the link between vaccines and eczema or other atopic disease. One of the studies that tries to answer this question was the Swedish Pertussis Vaccine Efficacy Trial 1, a double-blinded trial of 9289 children – where they found no associations between vaccination to pertussis and development of wheezing, eczema, or hay fever.
I still do not want to vaccinate my child – it may make her get worst flares. I don’t want to vaccinate her/him other siblings as well as they can develop eczema as well
Not vaccinating your child because your daughter has eczema means you are leaving her vulnerable to multiple vaccine-preventable disease. Even if it is established that your child cannot and should not be vaccinated (or need to delay) due to preexisting allergies or severe eczema – you should encourage people around you to be vaccinated in order to protect your child. You should not advocate for other parents not to vaccinate as well.
By encouraging other parents not to vaccinate based on false belief that vaccines cause eczema, more people would be misled into not vaccinating. When more parents do not vaccinate their children, our community’s herd immunity will be reduced leaving pockets of population who are vulnerable to infectious diseases like measles, pertussis and diphtheria. When this happen, outbreaks of disease can occur and those who are too young to be vaccinated or immunocompromised can be infected. When young infants and immunocompromised individuals get infected, they can develop serious complications that may lead to death or permanent disability.
Developing a health event or regression of mile stone after vaccination does not necessarily mean that vaccines caused it in the first place. This is called a logical fallacy – ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’. The post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for ‘after this therefore because of this’) fallacy is based upon the mistaken notion that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event.
For example, my daughter started to walk after her MMR jab, does that mean her MMR jab causes her to walk? I don’t think so. I started to wear spectacles a few months after I had my Standard 1 vaccination – does it mean that vaccines caused me to have short sightedness. Coincidentally, I was also only able to read after that Standard 1 vaccine – perhaps reading ability is associated with vaccines. I also remembered achieving very good marks in my exams after my rubella vaccination – does that mean vaccines causes me to be smarter?
The answer is no – vaccines did not cause any of these things – my daughter to start walking, my excellent exam results, my ability to read or my short sightedness.
Let’s make our parenting decisions on rational reasoning not based on fear and misinformation. As parents, it is our responsibility to protect them from vaccine preventable infectious diseases. Get educated, overcome your fear and choose to vaccinate.
Dr. Nur Hidayati is a permanent columnist for The Malaysian Medical Gazette and an internal medicine physician
References:
- Immunisation statistics malaysia http://www.unicef.org/infobycount…/malaysia_statistics.html…
- Atopic eczema in a multiracial country (Malaysia) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8252784
- Malaysian Allergy Prevention (MAP) Guidelines for Healthcare Professionals http://www.allergymsai.org/file_dir/212787936553bd6f22a41b0.pdf
- Nilsson L, Kjellman NI, Bjorksten B. A randomized controlled trial of the effect of pertussis vaccines on atopic disease. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1998;152:734–738.
[This article belongs to The Malaysian Medical Gazette. Any republication (online or offline) without written permission from The Malaysian Medical Gazette is prohibited.]