It is only hepatitis B vaccination that
very rarely is reported to cause ME/CFS as far as I am aware, and in this case, I believe that the symptoms of ME/CFS appear almost immediately after the vaccination. Interestingly, hepatitis B infection itself can produce symptoms that are ME/CFS-like. Though I understand there are now cases of ME/CFS arising after the new papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine.
But the question we
should really be asking is: "
does a lack of vaccination cause ME/CFS?"
Why? Well, ME/CFS is strongly linked to
enterovirus infection, particularly the enteroviruses
coxsackievirus B and
echovirus (and Dr Chia is performing
sterling work to try to prove that enteroviruses cause ME/CFS).
So this begs the question,
why don't we have a vaccine for coxsackievirus B and echovirus?
It certainly is technically feasible to create such a vaccine (as
this thread discusses). If we had all had coxsackievirus B and echovirus vaccinations in our youth, perhaps none of us here would be suffering from ME/CFS.
As everyone knows, the vaccine for
poliovirus was a huge success, and entirely eliminated the dreadful paralyzing, crippling childhood disease of
poliomyelitis in the developed world. Up to 20,000 people were paralyzed and permanently crippled by polio each year, and about 1,000 people died from it each year in the US before the vaccine. Ref:
1
In some extremely rare cases (one in 2.4 million) polio vaccine itself unfortunately causes poliomyelitis, but the numbers here are very tiny, certainly much, much smaller that the 20,000 people that used to get poliomyelitis before the vaccine was introduced. So there is a clear overwhelming benefit from polio vaccine.
Now poliovirus is actually an enterovirus, and so is closely related to the enteroviruses coxsackievirus B and echovirus that some researchers think cause ME/CFS.
It is therefore a great shame that all the research conducted in the 1930s, 40s and 50s into identifying the specific enteroviruses that caused polio, and into developing a vaccine for these polioviruses, did not go a little further, and also at the same time develop a vaccine for these nasty coxsackievirus B and echoviruses that are linked to ME/CFS.
Introducing a new coxsackievirus B and echoviruses vaccine now may be too late to help any of us ME/CFS patients here, but such a vaccine might very well prevent a whole new generation of people from contracting ME/CFS, and having so much of their lives wasted by this disease.