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American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access published online on October 8, 2008
American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwn253
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American Journal of Epidemiology © The Author 2008. Published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Original Contribution

Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccination and Asthma-like Disease in Early Childhood

Anders Hviid and Mads Melbye

Correspondence to Dr. Anders Hviid, Department of Epidemiology Research, Statens Serum Institut, Artillerivej 5, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark (e-mail: aii{at}ssi.dk).

Received for publication May 7, 2008. Accepted for publication July 23, 2008.

The authors evaluated the association between receipt of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and asthma-like disease in early childhood in a Danish nationwide cohort study (N = 871,234). Two outcomes were included: hospitalizations with asthma diagnoses and use of anti-asthma medications (for a subset of the cohort only). Poisson regression was used to estimate rate ratios according to vaccination status. MMR-vaccinated children were less often hospitalized with an asthma diagnosis (rate ratio (RR) = 0.75, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.73, 0.78) and used fewer courses of anti-asthma medication (RR = 0.92, 95% CI: 0.91, 0.92) than unvaccinated children. This "protective" effect of MMR vaccine was more pronounced for hospitalizations with severe asthma diagnoses (status asthmaticus: RR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.49, 0.82) and use of medication that was highly specific for asthma (long-acting β2-agonist inhalant: RR = 0.68, 95% CI: 0.63, 0.73). MMR vaccine was not negatively associated with anti-asthma medications often used for wheezing illnesses in early childhood (systemic β2-agonist: RR = 1.02, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.02). These results are compatible not with an increased risk of asthma following MMR vaccination but rather with the hypothesis that MMR vaccination is associated with a reduced risk of asthma-like disease in young children.

asthma; measles-mumps-rubella vaccine; vaccination; vaccines

Abbreviations: ATC, anatomic-therapeutic-chemical; CI, confidence interval; ICD, International Classification of Diseases; MMR, measles-mumps-rubella; UR, uses-to-users ratio


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