http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060906/hl_afp/healthdiseaseasthmavaccin...

New data released at a respiratory conference has slammed a belief that
vaccinations cause babies to develop asthma or make their asthma worse.

Timely vaccination does not increase the risk of asthma and in fact may
even protect against it, doctors from the University of Bern in
Switzerland and Britain's University of Leicester said Wednesday.

The research focussed on whooping cough vaccination, which has been a
big target of whispering campaigns. But the authors said the outcome
could apply to other infant vaccinations for tetanus, measles, mumps,
rubella and diphtheria and other diseases.

The study looked at 8,700 randomly selected children living in
Leicestershire, a county in central England. They were aged between one
and four years at the start of investigation, which ran for a five-year
period.

Among children who were fully vaccinated on schedule, 14 percent had
symptoms of wheezing, eight percent of whom had chronic allergic wheezing.

But among those who were incompletely vaccinated, or not vaccinated at
all, the wheezing rate rate was 21 percent, and 15 percent had chronic
symptoms.

The risk of wheezing was particularly strong among children whose
vaccinations had been delayed by three months or more. Indeed, delaying
vaccination beyond seven months raised the risk of wheezing by 56
percent among children from one to four years old, and by 84 percent
among those six to nine years old.

[...]

"On the contrary, when administered according to the schedule, they
might even provide protection against asthma in the future. This is an
important message for all parents worried about vaccinating their children."