Study found many autistic children with bowel problems before MMR was licensed

This page is research from an investigation by Brian Deer for the UK's Channel 4 Television and The Sunday Times of London into a campaign linking the MMR children's vaccine with autism. | Go to part I: The Lancet scandal | Go to part II: The Wakefield factor

The Royal Free doctors left many thinking that a new association between autism and bowel problems had been discovered and published in the Lancet, along with Andrew Wakefield's claimed link with MMR. But, while this field has been a low priority, reports on brain disorders and bowel problems date back to the 1930s, and work by Mary Coleman, a celebrated US paediatric neurologist, documented the link in autistic children in 1974: using reports on symptoms that developed before MMR was licensed in 1971

The patient information below was extracted by Brian Deer from The Autistic Syndromes, edited by Dr Mary Coleman, published in 1976. Seventy-eight autistic children - 64 males, 11 females, with a median age of 9 - were examined at the Children's Brain Research Clinic in Washington DC, each accompanied by a developmentally normal child of the same age and sex. Patients and controls came in special buses, each delivering groups of four children to the clinic, in the week of June 24-28 1974.

Coleman's interests focused on identifying different types of autism, but study of her data today - including the children's ages and the onset of any gastric problems - reveals a disproportionate incidence of bowel problems in autistic children before the MMR vaccine was even licensed in the US. Coleman's meticulous study reports that "the presence of constipation or diarrhea in 19 of the autistic patients and only 5 of the control children during the newborn period was significant". As can be seen from the ages reported in the histories, many of these children's bowel problems began in the 1960s.

Here are the anonymised notes on the 19, republished at this site in the hope that parents of autistic children with such problems may find this history of interest.