The study, published last month in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, reports that patients diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder and anorexia nervosa were more likely to have received vaccinations three months prior to their diagnoses.
Using information from a health insurance claims database, Leckman and his co-authors examined the correlations between specific vaccines and various neurological disorders in six- to 15-year-old children.
Higher numbers of vaccinated children were also found among those who were diagnosed with OCD, anxiety disorder and ADHD as soon as three months after their vaccinations.
The researchers found correlations for one vaccine in particular: the influenza vaccine, which was associated with higher rates of OCD, anorexia, anxiety disorder and tic disorder.
A biological explanation for these correlations has not been found, but a potential mechanism could lie in the body’s immune response to vaccines…
Some antibodies… can react against not only the intended pathogen proteins, but also against human proteins — a phenomenon called cross-reactivity. A 2015 study published in Science Translational Medicine discovered that antibodies elicited by the Pandemrix influenza vaccine cross-reacted with a human brain protein…
Autoimmunity, in which antibodies attack human proteins, is also known to play a critical role in normal brain development…
[I]f children were experiencing inflammation — a process that promotes autoimmunity — at the time of vaccination, the combination of inflammation and vaccination could have deleterious effects on brain development.
Another biological explanation could involve genetic factors… Prior studies in Scandinavian countries and China found that the H1N1 influenza vaccine was associated with narcolepsy. The influence of multiple genes found in specific populations could be responsible…