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Vaccinations - any evidence?

Messages
48
Hi,

I've posted here before about an immunologist I see (who has diagnosed me with mannose binding lectin deficiency, and is treating me for mast cell activation disorder), he has also done other immune tests and I ideally need pnuemovax ll, tetanus, hib & something else I've forgotten... I decided against the vaccines due to being highly suspicious that it was the Meningitis c vaccine that triggered me to fall ill when I was 11 years old.


I'm basically wondering if there is any evidence that a vaccination can trigger ME or not?

I'm now being asked if I'd consider just having the pnuemovax ll to see my response and whether I could then qualify to get IVIG, because my urologist feels we need to get to the bottom of my immune problems to help fight my chronic bladder wall infection (which isn't going).

I really hope this makes some sense, apologies in advance I am exhausted.

Thanks,

Becca
 

minkeygirl

But I Look So Good.
Messages
4,678
Location
Left Coast
I was told I need the pneumovax challenge to figure out what is up with my immune system since my numbers show I may have CVID although the Immunologist thinks it might be a Specific Immune Deficiency. I am willing to risk the vaccine because I feel pretty horrible and I need to find out what is going on with my immune system.

@Ema has had it and I think @Misfit Toy . I'm sure there are others here.

I have gotten flu shots before and I had no problem with them so I'm hoping I won't with this. Unfortunately, it's a necessary evil to find out what is up.
 
Messages
48
Thanks it's good to hear from someone in a similar position, I also feel like it's a risk I may have to take because I'm just not getting better and it's been far too many years now.

Do you mind me asking what has showed up wrong in your immune tests?
 

minkeygirl

But I Look So Good.
Messages
4,678
Location
Left Coast
Here are my labs. I had a lot of low numbers

Immunoglobulin A 74 reference 81-463
Immunoglobulin B 587 reference 696-1618
Immunoglobulin M 571 reference 48-271
Immunoglobulin G Subclass 1 287 reference 382-929
subclass 2 268 reference 241-700
subclass 3 17 reference 22-178
subclass 4 6.3 reference 4-86
immunoglobulin G Serum 547 reference 694-1618
Immunoglobulin E 53 <114
 

Soundthealarm21

Senior Member
Messages
420
Location
Dallas, TX
I also had the pneumovax at the beginning of this year to see if I would respond. All of my antibody levels went up and I had a good response to it. I guess I wasn't really that nervous because I've never had a bad reaction to a vaccine ever, so i'm not in your position.

But you can put me as one of the numbers that didn't have a bad reaction, and the test was useful to my doctor.
 

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
I don't think there's any evidence. Correlation isn't causation.

Some of us became ill right after a vaccination and have it written as a likely cause on our medical reports. The problem is that the question hasn't been effectively studied in the literature with large enough sample sizes to be meaningful.

Anecdotal yes, but I think vaccinations (in my case, a live viral vaccine) trigger the illness in more or less the same way as viruses themselves. Why? Well we don't know enough about CFS or ME to say.

The real question is not whether vaccines can trigger CFS, but rather would this pnuemovax ll vaccination would lead to a further decline in health and to be honest, no one really knows. Studies show that further immunisation of CFS patients is usually safe, but they did not explicitly test those who reacted to vaccinations in the first place.
 

IreneF

Senior Member
Messages
1,552
Location
San Francisco
I've never read anything about harm from immunizations that explained, in detail, what could happen, other than allergic reactions.

Pneumovax isn't a live virus; it isn't a virus at all--it's a collection of complex sugars that naturally occur on the exterior of certain Strep bacteria. It should stimulate the immune system into making antibodies against those sugars. People sometimes get feverish and achy from immunizations, but it's evidence that your immune system is reacting normally, because immune cells are stimulated to release cytokines that cause those symptoms.
 
Messages
15,786
I've never read anything about harm from immunizations that explained, in detail, what could happen, other than allergic reactions.
There's a few threads on the forum about the research into ME patients' reactions to flu vaccines. They've been shown to trigger an abnormal immune response of unknown duration (at least 30 days) which the researchers don't understand.

Something abnormal happens, which elicits unpleasant symptoms in the short term. It's unknown if this abnormal reaction results in more significant harm.
 

Iquitos

Senior Member
Messages
513
Location
Colorado
VCIP, a US Federal program to compensate children & families injured by vaccines. The purchasers of vaccines are paying for what damage BigPharma does. 75 cents from each vaccination is paid into the fund that pays damages.

http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html

1-2 years ago the family of a child who developed austism after vaccination was paid compensation for that austism damage. There are several hundred claims paid each year, not necessarily for autism, but for vaccine damage.

"As of 2005, the British government had paid out £3.5 million to vaccine injury patients since 1997." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_injury )
 

charles shepherd

Senior Member
Messages
2,239
General information on vaccines and ME/CFS from MEA:

Anecdotal evidence indicates that a number of vaccinations are occasionally capable of either triggering ME/CFS, or causing an exacerbation of pre-existing symptoms, and the UK CMO Working Group report acknowledged (in section 3.3.2) that vaccinations can occasionally act as a trigger factor in the development of ME/CFS.

The CMO report can be e-accessed using the document archive on the MEA website: www.meassociation.org.uk

The link is biologically plausible but there hasn't been any really robust research carried out to investigate the role of vaccinations as immune system stressors in the causation of ME/CFS.

Two fairly recent published reports of interest relate to an MHRA review of HPV vaccine (Cervarix) and ME/CFS >>

http://www.mhra.gov.uk/NewsCentre/Pressreleases/CON316330

and two case reports re Swine Flu vaccine and ME/CFS:

http://www.meassociation.org.uk/201...accination-bmj-rapid-responses-21-march-2014/

I have a longstanding interest in the role of vaccinations in ME/CFS and my patient evidence on the subject, which is now quite substantial and includes a number of health workers who were vaccinated almost as a condition of employment, indicates that hepatitis B vaccine appears to play an unusual and significant role here

This is supported by the results of the MEA website poll on the roll of vaccinations as trigger factors for ME/CFS (see below)

The MEA has an information leaflet which summaries the research evidence relating to vaccinations and ME/CFS.

Similar information is summarised and referenced on pages 90 - 91 of the MEA purple book (2016 edition).

MEA WEBSITE POLL:



  • If your ME/CFS was triggered by a vaccination, which vaccine was involved?
    • Hepatitis B (57%, 338 Votes)

    • Flu (9%, 51 Votes)

    • Other (7%, 41 Votes)

    • BCG (6%, 33 Votes)

    • Cannot remember (5%, 31 Votes)

    • Combination (5%, 27 Votes)

    • Tetanus (3%, 18 Votes)

    • Meningitis (3%, 17 Votes)

    • MMR (2%, 14 Votes)

    • Polio (2%, 10 Votes)

    • Hepatitis A (1%, 7 Votes)

    • Typhoid (0%, 4 Votes)


      Total Voters: 591
Start Date: April 30, 2010 @ 3:20 pm
End Date: June 2, 2010 @ 3:20 pm

Dr Charles Shepherd
Hon Medical Adviser, MEA
 
Messages
64
Location
Germany
Hey, I'm not quite diagnosed yet with cfs, but i'm very likely to have it.

I guess it started three years ago after I had herpes zoster, but it only got worse very slowly... until this year.
I've got a flu shot and since then, my symptoms worsened and added up. Suddenly I got headaches and pretty frequent, but light, joint aches, a lot of brain fog etc.
I just experienced normal symptoms you have after a flu shot, but since then I have a recurrent cold, now even swollen lymph nodes and idk why.

I don't quite know if a vaccine alone can cause cfs, but if you already suffer from it, it can definitely make it worse or cause relapses.
But as you said, it's probably a risk you should take. Every body is different and responses differently. Whatever decision you make, I hope you get better!
 

Silence

Senior Member
Messages
102
Location
Northern CA
Coincidentally, Both my twin and I got CFS a year after receiving the Hep B vaccine before going off to college. On another note, when I was recently hospitalised for lung surgery, one of the nurses gaves me a pnuemovax vaccine... Do I get a say in whether I want to receive vaccines in the hospital? I didn't even know they gave it to me until I requested my medical records after discharge.
 
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rodgergrummidge

Senior Member
Messages
124

Hip, unfortunately, the data in the paper that you cite suggesting that ME/CFS can be cured by Zinc Chloride is so weak that nothing can be clearly concluded from the study. Only 16 patients were tested and the investigators failed to include a control non-treated group. The authors claimed that 13 of 16 showed 'marked improvement' but no data was shown to support their claims. The authors didnt even provide the clinical criteria that were used to determine 'marked improvement'. The authors do not provide any qualitative data to support any of their conclusions. Such weak science only provides anti-Vaxers with the fuel for their scare campaigns.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
The authors didnt even provide the clinical criteria that were used to determine 'marked improvement'.

There is more info to be found in the video: one representative case of a patient who became very ill after papillomavirus vaccination is examined at timecode 10:30.



Such weak science only provides anti-Vaxers with the fuel for their scare campaigns.

It's a preliminary investigation, which I'd like to see followed up by a larger controlled study. The notion that chronic nasopharyngitis may be linked to autoimmunity is a Japanese theory, so perhaps other researchers in Japan will investigate this nasopharyngitis connection further.