. "Appendix A: Committee Conclusions and Recommendations from Previous Reports." Immunization Safety Review: Hepatitis B Vaccine and Demyelinating Neurological Disorders. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2002.
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Immunization Safety Review: Hepatitis B Vaccine and Demyelinating Neurological Disorders
Research Regarding MMR and ASD
The committee recommends the use of accepted and consistent case definitions and assessment protocols for ASD in order to enhance the precision and comparability of results from surveillance, epidemiological, and biological investigations.
The committee recommends the exploration of whether exposure to MMR vaccine is a risk factor for autistic spectrum disorder in a small number of children.
The committee recommends the development of targeted investigations of whether or not measles vaccine-strain virus is present in the intestines of some children with ASD.
The committee encourages all who submit reports to VAERS of any diagnosis of ASD thought to be related to MMR vaccine to provide as much detail and as much documentation as possible.
The committee recommends studying the possible effects of different MMR immunization exposures.
The committee recommends conducting further clinical and epidemiological studies of sufficient rigor to identify risk factors and biological markers of ASD in order to better understand genetic or environmental causes.
Communications
The committee recommends that government agencies and professional organizations, CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in particular, review some of the most prominent forms of communication regarding the hypothesized relationship between MMR vaccine and ASD, including information they provide via the Internet and the ease with which Internet information can be accessed.