Birth by C-section more than doubles odds of measles vaccine failure. Should I test?

[boutsour]

@kaferty You should follow the schedule, it’s the way it is for a reason and if you’re in the US schools might not accept your child’s vaccinations if they were done off schedule (this includes getting vaccines too early, as a school nurse I see this a lot and I cannot accept any vaccines done ahead of schedule).

 

[r_annett]

@kaferty First I have heard of this but I was a C-section baby and I have had the MMR vaccine multiple times and then gotten tested and don’t have immunity. Finally gave up on it. A doctor told me some people just don’t respond to the vaccine.

 

[boutsour]

@r_annett Hi I’m someone who also doesn’t build immunity to measles and was told the same by an immunologist after getting MMR many times unsuccessfully. FWIW I was born vaginally.

 

[r_annett]

@boutsour Interesting! This may be a case of correlation, not causation then.

 

[stephaniemfoster]

@kaferty Does anyone know how credible the National Natural Science Foundation of China is?

 

[reeses]

@kaferty One thing to remember about statistics and studies like this that doubling the likelihood doesn’t necessarily mean much. For example if there is a 1 in 100,000 chance of something happening doubling that would mean there is a 2 in 100,000 chance. It’s still an increase probability but it does jump to guarantee.

 

[kaferty]

@reeses Thanks. Yeah, similar with cancer studies where you "double your risk" but from 1 in a thousand to 2 in a thousand.

 

[xiconexertoroyah]

@kaferty If this were true, then other vaccines would most likely be non affective. So many kids are born via C section, this just seems nonsensical that a singular vaccine would be twice as likely not to work.

 

[terek]

@kaferty According to a study I just googled for this purpose, the measles vaccine failure rate is 1 in 100, which means according to the study you read, failure rate is as much as 2 in 100. Which is still obscenely low.

And please remember that correlation is not causation.

Classical Music composers age at death is significantly lower than rock musician composers (I did a study on this in college). But this study has no real, valid point because the population I sampled was classical composers who lived prior to 1900 and we've made medical advancements since then. At surface value, most people would say rock musicians should live less long (mean age, median age, mode, etc) because of lifestyle. But it's not a comparison of apples and apples.

There is zero reason for cesarean births to impact vaccine failure rates, speaking from a medical and pathological physiology standpoint.

 

[dmacschmidt]

@kaferty

Overall, in the infant cohort, 133 infants were born through the caesarean section, representing 38.0% of the population, consistent with levels of cesarean section use in China (36.7%)22. Of infants born via caesarean section, 12% (16/133) failed to mount an immune response to MCV1, as compared with 5% (10/217) of infants born by vaginal delivery (Supplementary Table 8).

I would say maybe, I wouldn't. The odd ratio makes it sound more dramatic, but it goes from 95% effective to 88% effective. On the other hand, it is more significative that what I am used to seeing, so it suggests that more research is needed.

 

[ailsa62]

@kaferty One thing you could consider is boosting your babies microbiomes with appropriate probiotics. This is a known disadvantage to babies born by c-section and would logically have some impact on the immune system. This is speculation, but one possibility.