Pertussis vaccination and asthma: is there a link?

Odent MR, Culpin EE, Kimmel T

1994

Primal Health Research Centre, London, England

Retrospective study of 446 children and adolescents (mean age 8, all subjects more than 4 years of age). All subjects were weaned after one year of age and received only breast milk in the first six months, in particular on the first day after birth. Different criteria of health were assessed. Obvious differences were found when the subjects were classified according to whooping cough vaccination. Among the 243 immunised children, 26 were diagnosed as having asthma (10.69%), compared with 4 (1.97%) of the 203 children who had not been immunised.

The authors have not been able to detect any confounding factors that explain the differences. They hypothesised that the absence of vaccination might be a sign of a general attitude compatible with a tendency to under-diagnose certain diseases, but significant differences were not found with other diagnoses (in particular eczema), and whooping cough was diagnosed among 16 non-immunised (against 1 immunised) children. See entry 0125 and 0126 for associated comments.