New evidence for a viral pathogenic mechanism for new variant inflammatory bowel disease and development disorder?

e are all aware of the public unease about a potential link between vaccination with the triple vaccine MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella) and autism or bowel in-flammatory conditions, with some hundreds of parents of afflicted children undertaking legal action against the manufacturers. There is no space to go into detail of the controversy over the link here (search the web using keywords " measles, MMR, vaccination, autism ")—suffice it to say that reliable epidemiologists are content that there is no significant association between MMR and either autism or bowel inflamma-tory conditions. However, epidemiology is a pretty blunt tool and the studies done do not rule out the possibility that there may be " at risk " groups where a real link between MMR and autism/ bowel inflammatory conditions exists. " Epidemiology is a pretty blunt tool and the studies done do not rule out the possibility that there may be at risk groups where a real link between MMR and autism/bowel inflammatory conditions exists " In 1998, Wakefield and colleagues reported colitis and ileal lymphoid nodu-lar hyperplasia in children with developmental disorders such as autism, and suggested a possible link between MMR vaccination and a chronic enterocolitis associated with neuropsychiatric dys-function in these children. 1 In 2000, a further study by the same group supported the association of developmental disorders with a distinct form of inflam-matory bowel disease—new variant in-flammatory bowel disease. 2 In this present paper, 3 the authors report the association of this condition with the persistence of at least fragments of the measles virus genome within the follicular dendritic cells and lym-phocytes of areas of lymphoid nodular hyperplasia. The technique used (reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction) could not indicate whether whole virus was present, or whether it was replicat-ing, but for the moment we can go along with the notion that the virus is persisting in some form in these patients. The interpretation of this finding is difficult. It would be entirely wrong to jump to the conclusion that the measles component of MMR " causes " the colitis or the developmental disorder in these particular (or any other) children. Causa-tion is rarely simple and never pure: most if not all diseases are multifactorial in nature, and the data here could equally well be interpreted as indicating that the colitis or the developmental disorder " cause " the persistence of the measles. The measles virus persistence …