This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Hi all

As I've mentioned it before, I'm french, and the question of the possible link between Hepatitis B vaccination and MS is regularly raised in Pasteur's country. From my point of view, it seems to be a "french-only" concern. My question is : what is the north american opinion about this concern ? Did your neuros give you any information about this ?

Hi Jean-

I can't quote the research here, but this has been a questioned raised before and the results purport that there is no connection. That being said, the questions keeps coming up in multiple venues and that alone keeps me wondering. Personally, I made the mistake of receiving the series of vaccinations a 2nd time (was unable to get records of previous vaccination) and was required to get it again for a job. My symptoms started within a few months after receiving it.

TOL

i had my dx incident 2 weeks after my travel vaccines (and a week after a pretty good smash on the head) and had to cancel my trip. but it could have been a coincidence, i don't know enough about vaccines to make sense about any of it.

Did it included Hepatitis B vaccine ?

yes, but not hep A.
hep A was the type of vaccine specifically, for which i found note of "aftermarket reports" of post-vaccine episodes. one could argue that those episodes would have happened anyway and are not statistically significant.
i did find some interesting/disturbing info on the components of the hep B vaccine but when i called the travel health nurse she assured me that the vaccines are "dead" whatever difference that is supposed to make.
she basically indicated that due to my personal history that she would not report my problem having occurred post-vaccine.
i think the backgrounds of patients who have issues post-vaccine would be very useful information to have at hand. maybe they could look for commonalities and develop a questionnaire for potential recipients. maybe instead of just saying such and such percent of people have trouble after the vaccine, we could have some info about *which* people have trouble after a vaccine!

Hi there,
I have MS and I did receive the Hep. vaccines for my job. However, my symptoms started about 5 years after that. I am a nurse working on a neurosurgery unit an all I know is that most of us ever get a vaccine if we don't have to. Like the flue vaccine. Most RN's on the unit don't take the shot. There are diseases like Guillian Barre that seem to be associated with viral infections that temporarily get your immune system worked up. Just like a vaccine would. we see a lot of Guillian Barre on the unit so no vaccine for us.
NN

i don't take vaccines as a rule either. they freak me out and i really didn't want to take that travel vaccine - i took the absolute minimum although they literally tried to sell me more injections than that.

In France, this concern is turning into a strange affair, quite decorrelated from scientific and clinical facts. The french equivalent of the US Supreme Court granted a few months ago an indemnization to a nurse who has MS and had received the HB vaccine. She was convinced her MS was due to the vaccine. Many people considered this decision as the proof there was a link between HB vaccination and MS (although the judges themselves recognized there wasn't any scientific evidence up to now). Consequently, HB vaccination coverage has dropped in France.
I wanted to have a north american point of view of the question, (especially your neuros's opinion) because it seems to me we are the only country in the world concerned by this. And I can't believe we (the french) have been smarter than the rest of the world for 15 years, discovering a vaccine side effect nobody has ever observed elsewhere.

Some immunizations have mercury in them which some people believe could be related to MS and other things such as Alzheimer's.

I know they say you should not get vaccines once you are DXed.