Babies given pneumococcal vaccination risk infection with serious drug resistant respiratory disease

Thursday, September 23, 2010 by: S. L. Baker, features writer
Tags: vaccination, respiratory infections, health news

(NaturalNews) We've all heard the arguments, supposed solid evidence and near hysteria about the importance of vaccinating children to protect them from diseases. Unfortunately, not only are there sometimes serious side effects associated with many vaccinations (https://www.naturalnews.com/vaccines.html) but now it turns out that infants who receive vaccinations to protect them from ear infection and sinusitis are more likely to come down with what can be a dangerous form of an antibiotic-resistant infection.

According to research just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), infants who received heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccination (PCV-7, brand name Prevnar ) at 2, 4, and 11 months were far more likely than unvaccinated babies to become infected with pneumococcal serotype 19A -- a strain of bacteria that appears to be turning into a superbug because it is quickly developing resistance to multiple antibiotics. Specifically, the vaccinated children had an increased risk of this type of infection in their nasal passages and the upper part of the throat behind their noses.

"A rapid increase in the presence of pneumococcal serotype 19A strains that are often multiresistant to antibiotics has been observed over the last decade. In the United States, serotype 19A is now the leading causative pneumococcal serotype of invasive and respiratory pneumococcal disease and the most frequently observed serotype in nasopharyngeal carriage," the research team from the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands reported in their study.

However, there has been debate over the cause of this increase in 19A infections. Was it somehow just spontaneous or is the widespread overuse of antibiotics involved -- or could it be possible that the very vaccines given to stop infections are somehow spurring these potentially serious, antibiotic resistant infections to develop? "In the United States and other countries, the increase in serotype 19A disease was associated in time with the widespread implementation of PCV-7 in routine infant immunization programs," the Dutch scientists noted in their research paper.

So Elske J. M. van Gils, M.D., and colleagues decided to investigate the association between PCV-7 vaccination and nasopharyngeal infection with serotype 19A pneumococci in healthy newborns in the Netherlands (where antibiotic resistance rates are low). The children were studied until they were 2 years old.

The research was carried out between July 2005 and February 2008, before the implementation of widespread PCV-7 vaccination in Dutch children. In all, 1,003 babies were randomly assigned into three groups: one group received 2 doses of PCV-7 at 2 and 4 months; another group received 2 doses plus one additional dose of PCV-7 at 2, 4, and 11 months; and the third control group received no vaccinations. Nasopharyngeal swabs were taken from the infants at the age of 6 weeks and when they were 6, 12, 18, and 24 months old.

The results? When the babies were 24 months old, the ones who had been vaccinated were almost two times more likely to have developed a bacterial infection of serotype 19A.. In all, 16.2 percent who had been given the vaccinations had infections while only 9.2 of infants who were not vaccinated had infections.

In their JAMA study, the researchers noted their research has demonstrated, for the first time, that the PCV-7 vaccine can lead to infection with serotype 19A bacteria -- pathogens which are well known to cause middle ear infections as well as potentially invasive pneumococcal respiratory disease that resists treatment with antibiotics. So are the scientists calling for a ban on the PCV-7 vaccine? Incredibly, the answer is no. Instead, they are calling for even more vaccines with "broader coverage".

They did add this warning: "However, we need to be aware that other serotypes with similar characteristics and disease potential may be the next in line to proliferate and therefore pneumococcal surveillance remains important after introduction of expanded pneumococcal conjugate vaccines."

In other words, they are admitting that after expanded new vaccines are given to babies, doctors and other should be on the lookout for yet more incidents of disease proliferation sparked by vaccinations.

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20823436
https://www.naturalnews.com/superbug.html