now incorporates the website very interesting news regarding the investigations and discoveries being made about the causes of autism. The elimination of mercury from vaccines has not helped reduce the number of cases of autism indicates that the causes were not vaccines, and researchers should focus on other research such as genetics, where the latest Research indicates that children with autism or other disorders have alterations to chromosome 16.
California study
autism cases continue to rise despite the removal of mercury from vaccines
Since autism was discovered in the forties, there have been numerous theories that have sought to provide an explanation for this disorder. The latest pointed to the possibility that an ingredient in some childhood vaccines, thimerosal, could be responsible for this neurological disorder. However, new research has shown that the number of cases in California continued to rise significantly despite the fact that this compound is eliminated almost complete from 2001.
Thimerosal is a mercury derivative preservative (almost 50% of its composition is ethyl mercury) that are frequently used in the manufacture of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products from its discovery in the thirties. The fact that children receive the majority of 'punctures' in the stages before the onset of symptoms of autism, raised suspicions that some ingredient of the vaccine could hold the key to understanding their origin.
The latest evidence against the mercury theory, widely held by the groups opposed to the vaccination of children, comes from California (USA). As can be read in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, a team led by Robert Schechter, California Department of Public Health studied the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders between 1995 and 2007 in children between three and 12 years.
Given that thimerosal was eliminated from most vaccines in the U.S. in 2001, the authors explain that the rate of children with autistic spectrum disorders should have decreased dramatically in that period if that were the case. But the data show that it was not on the contrary, in 10 years this figure rose from 0.3 children per 1,000 births (in 1993) to 1.3 per 1,000 in 2003. The peak is highest among those born in 2000 (4.5 cases).
In search of other possible external factors
Those responsible for this report believe that, despite its results, we must continue to explore possible external risk factors (and therefore preventable) to give to the cause of autism. The hypothesis that a modifiable factor could cause the problem, they acknowledge, is encouraging, so you have to keep investigating and evaluating the prevalence of autism in the coming years.
According to Eric Fombonne, an expert from Children's Hospital in Montreal (Canada) and author of an editorial on this subject in the same magazine, these findings should serve to reassure parents with autistic children, "so they know that the problem did not originate in vaccination, and have their children vaccinated as normal."
This study, Fombonne says, adds new and overwhelming evidence to previous studies that have found no link between childhood vaccines and autism. He asks, "How many more are needed negative work? And how much more spending of public money may justify [to further explore this issue]?". In his view, the holding of the beliefs of families with young affected too often been used as an excuse for promote alternative treatments, "with no proven effectiveness and often with some risks."
A genetic error
Coinciding with the publication of this study, other work has advanced the issue of The New England Journal of Medicine shows that there is an alteration in a region of chromosome 16 may explain the susceptibility genetics of certain individuals to suffer any of the 60 disorders included in the autism spectrum.
According to the researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (U.S.), these genetic errors are present in 1% of families with multiple cases of autism, in 1% of the autistic individuals and 1.5% of the people with Delay in development. "And yet the idea that apoyan chromosomal aberrations [and duplications is missing] contribute to the molecular provokes Autism."
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