Jun
Questions about New Combination Vaccines for Kids
New combination vaccines for infants and toddlers approved Thursday
by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will soon appear in
doctors’ offices in Chicago and across the country.
And parents are sure to have a lot of questions.
Will giving babies a single shot containing protection against four
or five infections be dangerous, moms and dads will want to know.
Could it overwhelm an infants’ immune system and are adverse side
effects more likely?
Don’t worry, says Dr. Tina Tan, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
The new vaccines are as safe and effective as individual vaccines
already on the market, she adds, and combining existing immunizations
into a single shot doesn’t raise the risk of harm.
“It’s not going to overload your infants’ immune system,” the physician says.
“If you think about what you or I or a baby is exposed to every day
in the environment, you are being challenged by more antigens
[proteins] than you get through these vaccines,” Tan explains.
But others are concerned.
“There are too many unknowns here; I’d like to see more research on
the effects of combining so many vaccines at once,” said Ann Dachel, a
member of the board of Advocates for Children’s Health Affected by
Mercury Poisoning.
She and others suspect a link between thimerosal – a mercury-based
preservative once used in vaccines – and autism. More than 99
percent of vaccines no longer use the preservative.
But medical experts say research doesn’t support that suspicion.
“When you look at the science, there’s no evidence that there is any
connection,” Tan says, who tells anxious parents that the illnesses
they’re guarding babies against are a much more considerable threat.
The benefit of the new combination vaccines is a reduction in the
number of shots babies get. Instead of four or five shots per visit at
the age of 2 months, 4 moths, 6 months, and 15 to 18 months, infants
will now endure one or two needle sticks.
Pentacel, manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur, protects again five
infections at the same time (diopththeria, tetanus, pertussis, polio
and Haemophilus influenza type B) and was tested on more than 5,000
children.
Kinrix, made by GlaxoSmith Kline, protects against four infections (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and polio).
Both vaccines were approved Thursday by the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices, which advises the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention on vaccine policy.
