6 year old dies following flu jab - underlying mito disorder

[Guest guest]

Experts to Discuss a Puzzling Autism Case, as a Second Case Looms

By _GARDINER HARRIS_

(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/gardine

r_harris/index.html?inline=nyt-per)

Published: June 28, 2008

Federal health officials on Sunday will call together some of the

world's leading experts on an obscure disease to discuss the

controversial case of a 9-year-old girl from Athens, Ga., who became

autistic after receiving numerous vaccinations.

But the government has so far kept quiet a second case that some say

is more disturbing and more relevant to the meeting.

On Jan. 11, a 6-year-old girl from Colorado received FluMist, a flu

vaccine, and about a week later " became weak with multiple episodes

of falling to ground " and " difficulty walking, " according to a case

report filed with federal health officials and obtained by The New

York Times.

The girl grew increasingly weak and feverish and " became more limp,

appears sleepy, acts as if drunk, " the report said. She was

hospitalized and underwent surgery and was finally withdrawn from

life support. She died on April 5, according to the report.

Both the 9- and 6-year-olds had mitochondrial disorders, a spectrum

of genetic diseases that have received almost no attention from

federal health officials. The 9-year-old, Hannah Poling, was 19

months old and developing normally in 2000 when she received five

shots against nine infectious diseases.

Two days later, she developed a fever,cried

inconsolably and refused to walk. In the next seven months, she

spiraled downward,and in 2001 doctors diagnosed autism.

No one knows whether vaccinations had anything to do with the girls'

health problems, and the scientific significance of individual cases

is always difficult to assess. But suggestions that mitochondrial

disorders could be set off or worsened by vaccinations, and that the

disorders might be linked to autism, prompted the meeting on Sunday

and has brought the disorders sudden national attention.

Those scheduled to present at the meeting who were contacted by The

Times said they knew nothing of the Colorado case.

" I haven't heard about this case, " said Dr. R. Insel,

director of the National Institute of Mental Health and the day's

first speaker. Dr. Iskander, acting director of the

immunization safety office at the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, said his group had studied the Colorado case

closely but did not discuss it with those presenting at the meeting

and had no plans to present the case to the conference, although he

and members of his group will attend.

" Part of the consideration is, what was the best use of that time? "

Dr. Iskander said in an interview. " To a large extent, the judgment

of the meeting organizers was to have the experts in these

conditions — which are not vaccine safety experts — to have most of

the agenda. "

Dr. Iskander said the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment

Network of the disease agency reviewed the medical records related

to the Colorado and Georgia cases, searched for similar reports and

asked vaccine manufacturers if they knew of similar cases. A

spokeswoman for MedImmune, the maker of FluMist, declined to comment.

The team noted that the Colorado child had not experienced any

problems with her previous vaccinations and was relatively old at

the time of her diagnosis. Dr. Iskander said the group had

concluded " that this is another case that points to the need of

better data on the risks and benefits of vaccinations in

children with these rare disorders. "

Study after study has failed to show any link between vaccines and

autism, but many parents of autistic children are convinced that

vaccines — usually given around the time autism becomes apparent —

are to blame. Parents and a small group of doctors have offered a

variety of scientific explanations in recent years to try to explain

why they think vaccines may cause or contribute to autism. Among the

first was that the measles vaccine caused a low-level measles

infection that affected children's brains. The science underlying

that theory has since been discredited.

The next theory was that a mercury-containing vaccine preservative,

thimerosal, poisoned their brains, causing autism. Multiple studies

have failed to find any relationship between thimerosal exposure and

autism, and nearly seven years after the preservative was removed

from childhood vaccines, autism rates seem unaffected.

The Poling case, however, offered advocates a new theory: that

vaccines may cause or contribute to an underlying mitochondrial

disorder, which in turn causes autism. Although autism is common

among children with mitochondrial disorders, several experts in the

disorders dismissed the notion that vaccines may cause the disease,

which is widely understood to have a genetic origin.

" After caring for hundreds of children with mitochondrial disease, I

can't recall a single one that had a complication from vaccination, "

said Dr. Darryl De Vivo, a professor of neurology and pediatrics

at Columbia University who will present at the meeting on Sunday and

is one of the premier experts in the field.

Mitochondria, which serve as the energy factories of cells, have

their own genetic material that is passed directly from mother to

child. Flaws in this material are relatively common. As those flaws

multiply, they interfere with mitochondrial function.

Dr. De Vivo said as many as 700,000 people in the United States had

flawed mitochondria, and in roughly 30,000 of them the genetic flaws

were expansive enough to cause disease.

Zoe