We know that there are no links between vaccines and type 1 diabetes mellitus, and now a new study shows that the aluminum in vaccines also isn’t linked to the disease. I’m sure that Christopher Aluminum Exley and James Lyons-Weiler are crying. Or they will just claim that all other scientists are wrong and they are right.
A lot of the vaccine deniers believe that vaccines cause Type 1 diabetes (or here), based on little evidence. As far as I can tell, this myth is based on the “research” from J. Barthelow Classen, M.D., who has pushed the idea that vaccines cause type 1 diabetes, through some magical process that has never been supported by other independent evidence.
In another example of the anti-vaccine zealot’s cherry-picking evidence to support their a priori conclusions, they ignore the utter lack of plausibility supporting any link between vaccines and Type 1 diabetes. But once again, real scientific research has found no link between vaccines and diabetes.
And new research has provided robust evidence that there is no link between the aluminum in vaccines and type 1 diabetes mellitus.
All about diabetes
What is Type 1 diabetes? Well, it’s a complicated answer, which I will try to answer in this section of the article.
The basic power source of our body is glucose, which is directly consumed or manufactured from almost anything we eat (carbohydrates, proteins, sugars, and fats). It is usually tightly regulated by the body so that when you have excess glucose in the blood, it is taken out of the blood and stored – but when the blood glucose level drops, it is then released from storage to be used for energy.
Insulin, the key hormone that regulates the level of glucose in the body, is released by the beta cells of the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. When blood glucose levels increase, insulin is released by the pancreas. It then induces storage cells to remove and store glucose from the blood.
In a complex agonistic interaction, the hormone glucagon, produced by other cells in the pancreas, is released when the blood glucose level is too low. Glucagon signals the body to a release of that stored glucose. (This once again goes to show how complex living systems are, and simple explanations are laughable and should be dismissed.) It’s a fascinating system of the body, and it’s remarkable that it works so well in 99% of people.
Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease where the body’s own immune system attacks the Islets of Langerhans, causing the production of insulin to drop or even to be halted. As of today, there are no cures, and the only way to treat someone is to regularly inject human insulin, which is produced by bioengineered E. coli.
Before the wide availability of insulin in the 1920s (usually pig insulin whose structure is similar to human insulin, but still caused a lot of allergic reactions), children simply died of the disease. Nothing could be done to prevent this death.
We don’t know what causes T1D. Coxsackie B virus has been linked to type 1 diabetes. And rubella virus has appeared in some cultured pancreatic beta cells. Research seems to be indicated that infections, some of which are vaccine-preventable, are linked to type 1 diabetes.
T1D should not be confused with another type of diabetes, Type 2 diabetes (T2D), which is probably caused by a combination of genetics, obesity, eating behavior, and several other lifestyle factors. Usually, in T2D, the pancreas produces sufficient insulin, but the body’s cells and organs become “resistant” to the insulin, meaning that they ignore the signal to store glucose, and thus the blood glucose remains high.
Oral medications, behavioral changes, such as improved diet and exercise, can often help manage if not reverse T2D. And “natural supplements” probably won’t help at all. Eventually, a person with chronic T2D may also have to take insulin.
Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are truly two different kinds of diseases with one common symptom, excess blood glucose levels. As far as I know, no one has ever attempted to link, with or without scientific evidence, T2D to vaccines.
Vaccines and diabetes
There has been an epidemic of type 1 and 2 diabetes in children, and the anti-vaccine world has tried to link that the increase in vaccines. But trying to show correlation between vaccines and diabetes can’t be done in the way that anti-vaxxers try to do it, which is a poor use of epidemiological data. Instead, real scientists use actual medical records from type 1 diabetes patients and try to determine if there is a difference in risk in the disease when comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
And once again, there is just a lack of association between type 1 diabetes and various vaccines:
- With haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine
- With HPV vaccines.
- With MMR vaccines.
- With all vaccines.
Aluminum in vaccines and type 1 diabetes
In a paper to be published in Pediatrics, by Jason M Glanz, Ph.D., of the Institute for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Denver, Colorado, researchers examined the risk of type 1 diabetes in relationship to vaccines and aluminum in a cohort study of over 500,000 children.
The researchers utilized data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or VSD, a large database of medical data which includes vaccination histories, health outcomes, and subject characteristics. The VSD database contains data compiled from surveillance on more than seven million people in the United States, including about 500,000 children from birth through age six years.
What were the key results:
- There was no association between cumulative antigen exposure or average days unvaccinated and type 1 diabetes.
- Cumulative exposure to the aluminum adjuvants in vaccines greater than 3 mg was associated with decreased incidence of type 1 diabetes (adjusted HR = 0.77). Yes, you read that right, aluminum in vaccines actually reduced the risk of type 1 diabetes.
- Mean cumulative aluminum exposure in this study was 4.11 mg.
Just for clarity, there are no aluminum adjuvants in COVID-19 vaccines.
Summary
The researchers found that the recommended childhood vaccine schedule, and aluminum adjuvants, does not increase incidence of type 1 diabetes, according to a cohort study of over half a million children.
I want to believe that this will end that trope. But I know better.
Citations
- Aanstoot HJ, Anderson BJ, Daneman D, Danne T, Donaghue K, Kaufman F, Réa RR, Uchigata Y. The global burden of youth diabetes: perspectives and potential. Pediatr Diabetes. 2007 Oct;8 Suppl 8:1-44. doi: 10.1111/j.1399-5448.2007.00326.x. PubMed PMID: 17767619.
- Black SB, Lewis E, Shinefield HR, Fireman B, Ray P, DeStefano F, Chen R. Lack of association between receipt of conjugate haemophilus influenzae type B vaccine (HbOC) in infancy and risk of type 1 (juvenile onset) diabetes: long term follow-up of the HbOC efficacy trial cohort. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2002 Jun;21(6):568-9. PubMed PMID: 12182385.
- DeStefano F, Mullooly JP, Okoro CA, Chen RT, Marcy SM, Ward JI, Vadheim CM, Black SB, Shinefield HR, Davis RL, Bohlke K; Vaccine Safety Datalink Team. Childhood vaccinations, vaccination timing, and risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus. Pediatrics. 2001 Dec;108(6):E112. PubMed PMID: 11731639.
- Demicheli V, Rivetti A, Debalini MG, Di Pietrantonj C. Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2012, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004407. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004407.pub3
- Glanz JM, et al. The childhood vaccination schedule and the lack of association with type 1 diabetes. Pediatrics 2021; DOI:10.1542/peds.2021-051910.
- Klein NP, Goddard K, Lewis E, Ross P, Gee J, DeStefano F, Baxter R. Long term risk of developing type 1 diabetes after HPV vaccination in males and females. Vaccine. 2019 Mar 28;37(14):1938-1944. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.02.051. Epub 2019 Mar 1. PubMed PMID: 30827738; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6719305.
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- Numazaki K, Goldman H, Wong I, Wainberg MA. Infection of cultured human fetal pancreatic islet cells by rubella virus. Am J Clin Pathol. 1989 Apr;91(4):446-51. PubMed PMID: 2648801.
- Oikarinen S, Tauriainen S, Hober D, Lucas B, Vazeou A, Sioofy-Khojine A, Bozas E, Muir P, Honkanen H, Ilonen J, Knip M, Keskinen P, Saha MT, Huhtala H, Stanway G, Bartsocas C, Ludvigsson J, Taylor K, Hyöty H; VirDiab Study Group. Virus antibody survey in different European populations indicates risk association between coxsackievirus B1 and type 1 diabetes. Diabetes. 2014 Feb;63(2):655-62. doi: 10.2337/db13-0620. Epub 2013 Sep 5. PubMed PMID: 24009257.
- Skyler JS. Primary and secondary prevention of Type 1 diabetes. Diabet Med. 2013 Feb;30(2):161-9. doi: 10.1111/dme.12100. Review. PubMed PMID: 23231526; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3580116.
