Abstract

ROQUE VALDES, Alejandro. Autism and pediatric vaccines. Vaccimonitor [online]. 2004, vol.13, n.2, pp.1-10. ISSN 1025-028X.

The present work is a review article, which intends to approach a controversial and current topic: the possible causal association that has been suggested between autism and pediatric vaccines. Beginning in the last decade of the XX century, a series of changes in the classification, nomenclature and diagnostic approaches of autism has occurred. The results of the epidemiological studies, performed according to these new concepts, showed that the prevalence rates of autism at the present time are higher than 15 years ago. Vaccines are among the factors that have been considered for explaning this phenomenon. The mechanisms invoked to try to involve vaccines in the ethiology of autism are: the excess of mercury derivatives from tiomersal, which is used as vaccines preservatives, autoinmune processes that act on the CNS, direct or indirectly by inducing lesions at the intestinal level of the mucous membrane, which increase the absorption of macromolecules, antigens and toxins that once in the bloodstream may reach the CNS producing the lesions responsible for the genesis of autism there.

Keywords : Autism; vaccines..

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