May 17, 2014

Robustly null

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A new study pooled data from previous studies of vaccination and autism, and as Emily Willingham writes, it gives what you’d expect.

Five cohort studies involving 1,256,407 children and five case-control studies involving 9920 children were included in this analysis.

  • There was no relationship between vaccination and autism (OR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.92 to 1.06).
  • There was no relationship between vaccination and [autism spectrum disorder] (OR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.68 to 1.20).
  • There was no relationship between  [autism spectrum disorder] and MMR (OR: 0.84; 95% CI: 0.70 to 1.01).
  • There was no relationship between  [autism spectrum disorder] and thimerosal (OR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.77 to 1.31).
  • There was no relationship between  [autism spectrum disorder] and mercury (Hg) (OR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.93 to 1.07).

Findings of this meta-analysis suggest that vaccinations are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder.

These results basically rule out any substantial effect due to vaccination. To the extent that they suggest any effect, it is protective, but that’s probably just chance.

This sort of result is pretty boring, so it’s unlikely to get anywhere near the same media coverage as the claims that there is an effect.

 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »