vinucube Posted August 18, 2013 Author Posted August 18, 2013 My understanding is that these proteins are in the medium used to grow the virus or bacteria. Unless people admit that current vaccines/injections have a contamination problem that causes food allergy, they are not going to be looking for alternatives or developing alternatives. Food proteins processed by the human digestive system are safe for absorption into the blood stream. So any medium that mimics food proteins processed by the human digestive system could be an alternative. Thanks.
John Cuthber Posted August 18, 2013 Posted August 18, 2013 Are these materials just by-products or do they act as adjuvants? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjuvant You might end up with a vaccine which can't possibly provoke a food allergy- but doesn't actually work. At that point you are back to a "vaccine vs no vaccine" debate and we agree about the outcome of that discussion.
Nisslbody Posted August 18, 2013 Posted August 18, 2013 My understanding is that these proteins are in the medium used to grow the virus or bacteria. Unless people admit that current vaccines/injections have a contamination problem that causes food allergy, they are not going to be looking for alternatives or developing alternatives. Food proteins processed by the human digestive system are safe for absorption into the blood stream. So any medium that mimics food proteins processed by the human digestive system could be an alternative. Thanks. Please look into it a little further. Researchers would LOVE to find an effective alternative to live chicken eggs for growing many types of virus for vaccines, and have been working on it for many years. Using eggs is slow, expensive, and inefficient, which is why the US allocated over a billion dollars into researching alternatives seven years ago, and also why stuff like this: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2013/01/fda-approves-first-flu-vaccine-grown-insect-cells is big news. Of course, using insect cells is not guaranteed to be free from problems, either. Nothing is.
John Cuthber Posted August 18, 2013 Posted August 18, 2013 I hope they have thought that through. We have enough people allergic to insects already.
vinucube Posted August 18, 2013 Author Posted August 18, 2013 (edited) "I hope they have thought that through. We have enough people allergic to insects already." Exactly my concern as well that I conveyed to Flublok. Are these materials just by-products or do they act as adjuvants? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjuvant You might end up with a vaccine which can't possibly provoke a food allergy- but doesn't actually work. At that point you are back to a "vaccine vs no vaccine" debate and we agree about the outcome of that discussion. I don't think food proteins act as adjuvants. Most vaccines contain alum as an adjuvant. Just as adjuvants make the vaccine more effective. I suspect the adjuvants also make the food proteins in the vaccines more effective in terms of developing food allergies. As I wrote before, alum is injected along with ovalbumin into BALB/c mice as a demonstration of the allergy model. Such mice subsequently exhibit allergy symptoms when challenged with ovalbumin. Edited August 18, 2013 by vinucube
Nisslbody Posted August 19, 2013 Posted August 19, 2013 I hope they have thought that through. We have enough people allergic to insects already. That's exactly the thing. Viruses are grown in living cells because there's no other way to grow them... it's not something that can just be done away with. I can't actually wrap my brain around his objection, it doesn't make any sense. "I hope they have thought that through. We have enough people allergic to insects already." Exactly my concern as well that I conveyed to Flublok. I don't think food proteins act as adjuvants. Most vaccines contain alum as an adjuvant. Just as adjuvants make the vaccine more effective. I suspect the adjuvants also make the food proteins in the vaccines more effective in terms of developing food allergies. As I wrote before, alum is injected along with ovalbumin into BALB/c mice as a demonstration of the allergy model. Such mice subsequently exhibit allergy symptoms when challenged with ovalbumin. Here, maybe read this: https://www.boundless.com/microbiology/viruses--2/culturing-viruses/
CharonY Posted August 19, 2013 Posted August 19, 2013 (edited) The paper concludes: Twenty-four of the 26 children with allergic reactions to vaccines had anti-gelatin IgE ranging from 1.2 to 250 Ua/ml. Seven had allergic reactions on ingestion of gelatin-containing foods. Of these, two had reactions before vaccination, and five had reactions after vaccination. All the control children without allergic reactions to vaccines had no anti-gelatin IgE.CONCLUSION:We reconfirmed a strong relationship between systemic immediate-type allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, to vaccines and the presence of specific IgE to gelatin. Moreover, some of the children also had allergic reactions to food gelatin before or after vaccination. You are misinterpretating the conclusion. It does not mean that they had no allergies before (in fact the opposite is likely true) but that in five cases that had confirmation that they also had allergic reaction afterwards (they did not purposefully exposed them). The goal of this study is to link severe immediate allergic reaction to MMR, which is indicative of an existing allergy of the patient. There is no claim that I can see that any of it is causing food allergy. And again, the study design is aimed to look at pre-existing reactions. That is why they also surveyed whether there have been reported reactions to gelatine, to corroborate their findings on the IgE level. Be aware that the real issue is that many patients are allergic to gelatin, egg proteins and other components of vaccines and there are efforts to minimize them, One example are flu vaccines for popele with egg allergies. The link between the creation of allergies as an additional problem is not totally being ignored, however the links found so far are somewhat weak and would require more studies befire conclusions can be drawn (as being made in this thread). Note that the goalpost has been moved a few times within this thread, but the real intersting question are how likely are vaccines to cause (not trigger) allergies and how much their contribution to overall acquisition of allergies are. The truth is that right now epidemiological studies are being inconclusive, most likely because there is not a single most contributing factor that can be easily filtered out of epidemiological data. It is silly to purposefully claim that it is the case, however. That being said, the hygiene hypothesis is still a favored model by many. With respect to food allergies one theory is that delayed exposre may be a risk factor contributing to allergies and some ongoing studies (e.g. http://www.leapstudy.co.uk/LEAP.html) are looking into this. Edited August 19, 2013 by CharonY
Arete Posted August 19, 2013 Posted August 19, 2013 (edited) The paper concludes: You're still only citing the abstract of the paper, which leads me to believe you haven't read the body of the manuscript. I am repeating myself again by saying they DO NOT examine whether or not the vaccine causes sensitivity to gelatin - they examine whether or not it causes an anaphylactic reaction, and speculate that it MAY be causative in the end of the discussion. I.e., "we should consider the possibility of sensitization through repetitive immunization of gelatin-containing DTaP vaccine" Furthermore from the same paper: "Among 325 patients [N.B. the study group for the paper was patients who presented to a hospital with adverse reactions to vaccines] , 34 manifested anaphylaxis (15 after measles vaccine, 9 after rubella vaccine, and 10 after mumps vaccine). The total number of doses shipped of each vaccine was 1.26 million doses of measles vaccine, 1.38 million doses of rubella vaccine, and 0.54 million doses of mumps vaccine during the period of the investigation. The reported incidence of anaphylaxis was 11.9 cases/1 million doses for measles vaccine, 6.52 cases/1 million doses for rubella vaccine, and 18.5 cases/1 million doses for mumps vaccine." Meaning that reported in your own citation, are much lower rates of adverse, anaphylactic reactions in comparison with an extremely broad array of other medications. It's doesn't hold that vaccine safety is unacceptable, unless many many other medications are too. For example, the risk of an anaphylactic reaction to aspirin is 1/50,000, much more likely than a reaction to a vaccine. Is aspirin unacceptably dangerous too? Edited August 19, 2013 by Arete
John Cuthber Posted August 19, 2013 Posted August 19, 2013 That's exactly the thing. Viruses are grown in living cells because there's no other way to grow them... it's not something that can just be done away with. I can't actually wrap my brain around his objection, it doesn't make any sense. Yes, I know, and my friends who grow viruses tell me that it's damned difficult. However, it is, in principle, possible to separate the viral proteins (which we want an immune response to) from the rest of the cell debris (which we don't). It's not a great analogy but we don't give people with headaches willow bark to chew- we give them aspirin. It's easier to titrate the dose and safer in that we don't give people other chemicals that don't help (for example, the bark might contain mycotoxins). From that point of view, it would "obviously" be better to use only the viral proteins as a vaccine. However I wonder if the other materials present act as an adjuvant. What I fully understand is that it would be more expensive to "purify" the product and you might well find that it didn't work so well. I can't blame the companies who make the vaccines for not taking that step. After all- if it fails they will get sued into oblivion. (It's not that I trust "big Pharma" further than I can spit, it's just that they are stuck with making business decisions. So,we could take at least some of the "food" proteins out of vaccines. It would be expensive, they might stop working and such action might not actually alter the incidence of food allergy. As I asked vinucube before, lots of allergies are on the increase- hay-fever for example- but pollen isn't present in vaccines. How can you say that the rise in food allergy isn't caused by whatever is causing the rise in pollen allergy?
CharonY Posted August 20, 2013 Posted August 20, 2013 It should be noted that gelatin is often used as a stabilizer for proteins, often used during freeze drying or other long-term storage procedures. As such they are probably a bit hard to get rid of, or would have to be replaced by something else that may be more hazardous. I would also like to emphasize again that severe reaction described in the Sakaguchi is very rare, (usually figures at around 2-4 per million patients) and, are more indicative of pre-existing allergies.
vinucube Posted August 21, 2013 Author Posted August 21, 2013 (edited) Referring to Nakayama et al.: When MMR was administered before DTaP, there was no anaphylaxis reported. "It was around 1994 that most children started to receive DTaP vaccine before live measles or rubella vaccines, as shown in Fig 1. Reports on anaphylactic reactions after live vaccines began to accumulate at the same time." As I pointed out before, too many coincidences to ignore ... "We examined 165 paired sera obtained before the first dose of DTaP and 1 month after the third dose of DTaP. Of 165 paired sera, 62 were obtained from the recipients of gelatin-free DTaP, and IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in none. In 103 recipients of gelatincontaining DTaP, IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in 2 recipients." More coincidence? That's 2% of recipients developing IgE antibodies to gelatin in DTaP. Add this wrinkle: "In the gastrointestinal tract of babies born by c-section, there is a pattern of "at risk" microorganisms that may cause them to be more vulnerable to developing the antibody Immunoglobulin E, or IgE, when in contact with allergens" - Christine Cole Johnson, Ph.D., MPH, chair of Henry Ford Department of Health Sciences.[5] I don't know the C-section statistics in Japan ... Add several vaccines with various food proteins, powerful adjuvants that increase the immunogenicity of the food proteins, multiple (5) vaccines being administered simultaneously, sky-rocketing C-section rates in the US and 15% of today's children being allergic to foods may not be difficult to explain. C-sections may also explain John's question about increasing hay-fever ... "DTaP has a low incidence of clinical side effects,12 and gelatin-free DTaP appears to be desirable for avoiding unnecessary sensitization against gelatin." I would have hoped that this would have sounded the alarm to look at all food proteins in vaccines - 14 years ago ... There is plenty of evidence (including those I provided starting with Charles Richet more than a hundred years ago) that parenteral administration of a protein causes the development of an allergy to that protein. To me Murphy's law applies. If proteins injected into the blood stream CAN cause allergies, they WILL cause allergies. Unless vaccines/injections are specifically engineered to avoid causing allergies, Nakayama's findings should come as no surprise at all. In fact, it should have been predicted. "After all- if it fails they will get sued into oblivion." Not in the US. Vaccine makers are immune to lawsuits and therefore have little incentive to improve vaccine safety. Thanks. Edited August 21, 2013 by vinucube
Arete Posted August 21, 2013 Posted August 21, 2013 (edited) That's 2% of recipients developing IgE antibodies to gelatin in DTaP. As I stated before, their sampling was of patients who suffered a reaction, not of patients administered a vaccine: "total of 366 patients with adverse reactions to live measles, mumps, and rubella monovalent vaccines were reported to the vaccine postmarketing research unit at the Kitasato Institute." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674999705087 It's not 2% of vaccine recipients - it's 2% of patients reporting adverse reactions to vaccines - which has been demonstrated to be an exceptionally low proportion by the same paper (see post #33). You can't cherry pick like that to try and inflate statistics - it's patently dishonest. I'll assume you missed it rather than avoided it, so I'll re-ask: Given your own sources are showing vaccines are orders of magnitude safer than other, widely administered medications such as antibiotics and aspirin, would you consider these medications to be more unacceptably dangerous than vaccines? If so, what would you consider the acceptable chance of adverse side effects to be to consider a medication "safe"? Edited August 21, 2013 by Arete
vinucube Posted August 22, 2013 Author Posted August 22, 2013 (edited) Arete, I believe the following part of the paper is a separate study probably described in greater detail in reference 11 (which I have not been able to locate). 11. Kuno-Sakai H, Nakayama T, Aizawa C. Effects of alum precipitated DPT vaccines, which contain gelatin as additive or which contain trace amount of gelatin originated from detoxification process, to anaphylactic reactions occurring after administration of live vaccines with gelatin. Clin Virol 1996;24:210-9. "In the preliminary results investigating the immunogenicity of gelatin in DTaP, a trace amount of gelatin in DTaP was immunogenic. We examined 165 paired sera obtained before the first dose of DTaP and 1 month after the third dose of DTaP. Of 165 paired sera, 62 were obtained from the recipients of gelatin-free DTaP, and IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in none. In 103 recipients of gelatincontaining DTaP, IgE antibodies to gelatin developed in 2 recipients." The 366 patients you refer had received DTaP followed by MMR and suffered adverse reactions. The 165 paired sera were I believe obtained from a separate group before and after DTaP, unrelated to MMR adverse events. My understanding was that this was a separate study "investigating the immunogenicity of gelatin in DTaP". Hence my statement that 2% of the recipients were affected. Regarding aspirin and antibiotic safety compared to vaccines: There are two separate issues. The number of adverse reactions to vaccines does not give you visibility into the scale of the problem. Many people who have food allergies will not have an adverse reaction to a vaccine that contains the allergen. Many people with egg allergy can get the influenza vaccine without suffering a reaction. The main problem is vaccines causing the food allergy, not vaccines causing adverse reactions immediately following vaccination. 15 million Americans are estimated to have life-threatening food allergies. I think there is evidence to believe that vaccines/injections caused most of them. If aspirin and antibiotics caused a problem of this magnitude, sure, they will have to go to the top of the list. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12495022 "Groups of mice (n = 4 to 5) were injected intraperitoneally with the protein extracts (plus alum as an adjuvant)". Injecting protein + alum to induce allergy in mice is very common and well known. We do the same to humans and expect a different result? Thanks. Edited August 22, 2013 by vinucube
vinucube Posted September 21, 2013 Author Posted September 21, 2013 Kuno-Sakai H, Kimura M. Removal of gelatin from live vaccines and DTaP-an ultimate solution for vaccine-related gelatin allergy.Biologicals 2003;31:245-9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14624794
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