This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

I was talking to my brother and he reminded me of something I hadn't thought about for a while. In 2004 I got very sick. I could barely eat, swallow, or drink. I would break into a very cold sweat and sometimes collapse and almost pass out. I went to see a doctor who immediately sent me to the emergency room. They ran a gamut of blood tests and found nothing and thought perhaps it was some type of virus that they could not find. I was on an IV for two days because I was so severely out of whack. After a week of recovery I began my running again but it has never been quite the same since then, everything has been harder. I can't believe he put the two things(my MS and that sickness) together and I didn't but since he told me I've really been wondering. This is something I'm also going to present to my neuro at my next appt. I know it's too late to go back but I would be curious to know if that could have had any effect on things.

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When I first had symptoms I was detailing cars at a hummer dealership. I recall that was the first time my right leg went completely dead (my leg never got that bad again!)...

I worked with literally hundreds of different chemicals and I was not provided with any type of protective mask. I breathed that shit in day after day for almost a year.

I recall the way my leg felt, at the time (2003), I thought it was directly linked to the chemicals. I even got my boss scared I was going to sue. I had no proof, so I let it go.

Come last Feb. I'm diagnosed (finally, after all the misdiagnoses of symptoms over the years).

It took the Optic Neuritis for them to even begin to look for the cause.

or maybe I worked there in '04... I lose track of the years.

Oh yes, and I also recall reading the backs of these cans. I think about 90% of them had a warning about "causing neurological damage"

After searching the Internet back then, I also had the assumption I was suffering from alcoholic neuropathy, the way I used to drink.

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My daughter's MS started immediately following a hepatitis vaccine. One of the "warnings" that comes with these vaccines is that they can cause MS. A lady I know had the same reaction (about a year ago). Several doctors she went to diagnosed her with vaccine reaction sickness (new one to me!) Several doctors diagnosed MS.

What does all of this say to me? There is a whole lot we don't know about this "diagnosis".

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Chris55,



Can you tell us which vaccine, because I just don't believe it.

If you are going to make claims as strong as this I think we are entitled to have them verified.

Unless there is more than one cause for MS, the idea that a modern vaccine is causing a disease which has been around for over 100 years is faulty.

gwa

i don't think there is one cause for ms, because there is such a diverse grab bag of symptoms and the diagnostic is just a checklist of stats.

re: the potential influence of a vaccine on a shaky immune system, i do think it can possibly be viewed as one of a selection of "trigger" events.

my dx attack was right after a travel vaccine for hep B in preparation for a stopover in thailand, en route to australia. in the end, i got it for nothing because i cancelled the trip. i was pissed. my later trip to oz did not involve stopovers in any iffy locations. so there wasn't even any point at all. i will think hard before going anywhere involving travel vaccines again. at least i'll make sure i'm feeling really tough and healthy before i challenge my system like that another time!

i did a lot of related research at the time but it probably didn't make it on here because i guess i signed up a little later on. i was able to unearth some reports of ms onset after hep A vaccine. i believe it was after the product was released, not something that occurred during a trial.

here are two of numerous possibilities: the ms onsets that occurred after hep vaccine were coincidental, and did not significantly vary from a population of non-vaccinated people who would develop ms in whatever time frame. another possibility is that some people who have these vaccines are in a fragile state, easily tipped over the balance by a hit to the immune system such as a vaccine.

i reported my situation to my travel health clinic because my attack happened at exactly the same time as the end of the hep B incubation period. the travel nurse said that the vaccines are "dead". i just kind of left it at that, and focussed more on getting my system out of a fragile state and hoping that my immune system would recover. there was also the history of b12 deficiency, and the snowboarding crash that led up to my attack. maybe it was a combination of all three events, and the vaccine just played a supporting role in the overall downward spiral. who knows? just wanted to put that out there.

This has been studied...



Hepatitis B vaccination and the risk of multiple sclerosis.

N Engl J Med. 2001 Feb 1;344(5):327-32.
Comment in:
N Engl J Med. 2001 Feb 1;344(5):372-3.
N Engl J Med. 2001 Jun 7;344(23):1793-4; author reply 1795-6.
N Engl J Med. 2001 Jun 7;344(23):1793; author reply 1795.
N Engl J Med. 2001 Jun 7;344(23):1794; author reply 1795.
N Engl J Med. 2001 Jun 7;344(23):1794; author reply 1795.

Ascherio A, Zhang SM, Hernán MA, Olek MJ, Coplan PM, Brodovicz K, Walker AM.
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA. alberto.ascherio@channing.harvard.edu

BACKGROUND: Reports of multiple sclerosis developing after hepatitis B vaccination have led to the concern that this vaccine might be a cause of multiple sclerosis in previously healthy subjects.

METHODS: We conducted a nested case-control study in two large cohorts of nurses in the United States, those in the Nurses' Health Study (which has followed 121,700 women since 1976) and those in the Nurses' Health Study II (which has followed 116,671 women since 1989). For each woman with multiple sclerosis, we selected as controls five healthy women and one woman with breast cancer. Information about hepatitis B vaccination was obtained by means of a mailed questionnaire and was confirmed by means of vaccination certificates. The analyses included 192 women with multiple sclerosis and 645 matched controls and were conducted with the use of conditional logistic regression.

RESULTS: The multivariate relative risk of multiple sclerosis associated with exposure to the hepatitis B vaccine at any time before the onset of the disease was 0.9 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.5 to 1.6 ). The relative risk associated with hepatitis B vaccination within two years before the onset of the disease was 0.7 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.3 to 1.8 ). The results were similar in analyses restricted to women with multiple sclerosis that began after the introduction of the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine. There was also no association between the number of doses of vaccine received and the risk of multiple sclerosis.

CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate no association between hepatitis B vaccination and the development of multiple sclerosis.

Pubmed link



Hepatitis B vaccine and risk of multiple sclerosis.

Expert Rev Vaccines. 2002 Dec;1(4):461-6.
DeStefano F, Verstraeten T, Chen RT.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30341-3724, USA. fdestefano@cdc.gov

The possibility that hepatitis B vaccine may cause or exacerbate multiple sclerosis stems from several case reports of onset or recurrence of symptoms of CNS demyelination shortly following vaccination. It is difficult, however, to infer causation from individual case reports since they may simply represent coincidental temporal associations with vaccination. There is only weak, nonspecific evidence to support the biological plausibility of an association between hepatitis B vaccine and multiple sclerosis. Epidemiological studies have found that hepatitis B vaccine does not increase the risk of developing multiple sclerosis or cause exacerbations. The US Institute of Medicine and other review panels have concluded that the evidence favors rejection of a causal association between hepatitis B vaccine and multiple sclerosis.

Pubmed link

Lyon just posted a terrific listing of differential diagnosis on the site-
It includes a description of ADEM- a demyelination disease that occurs suddenly after infection or vaccination. This doesn't imply that vaccinations cause MS, but that it may create a situation that looks an awful lot like MS.

Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis
(ADEM)
Monophasic demyelination occurring with or
just after an infection, vaccination, or other
immune-altering event.
The symptoms can be identical,
including involvement of optic
nerve, brain, and spinal cord,
and the MRI may show
identical scattered white-matter
signal abnormalities.
There is no infallible method of
distinguishing ADEM from MS. It
occurs in the setting of infections,
is more common in childhood, and
may include altered consciousness
and other unusual symptoms, and
the MRI may show hemorrhagic
lesions and/or gray matter lesions
(ormayevenbenormal).

http://www.neurology.wisc.edu/publicati ... euro_7.pdf

Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM)

What is Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis?
Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) is a neurological disorder characterized by inflammation of the brain and spinal cord caused by damage to the myelin sheath. The myelin sheath is the fatty covering, which acts as an insulator, on nerve fibers in the brain. ADEM may occur in association with a viral or bacterial infection, as a complication of inoculation or vaccination, or without a preceding cause. Onset of the disorder is sudden. Symptoms, which vary among individuals, may include headache, delirium, lethargy, coma, seizures, stiff neck, fever, ataxia, optic neuritis, transverse myelitis, vomiting, and weight loss. Other symptoms may include monoparesis (paralysis of a single limb) or hemiplegia (paralysis on one side of the body). The disorder occurs in children more often than in adults.

-AC

Chris-
You state that your daughter's symptoms began immediately after her vaccination, and that a couple doctors attributed her illness to a vaccine reaction. This does happen, and it is called Acute Disseminated Encephamlmyelitis. The prognosis is very good, and ADEM is almost impossible to differentiate from MS.

http://archneur.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/62/11/1673.pdf

Hope this helps....
best,
AC