Does Vaccine Risk Have a Geographic Component? The Case for Vaccine Safety Screening

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE a strong geographical pattern to impress upon the human mind that something is real.  And if that something is real, it may be important.

Look at this map of migrational groups (identified by genetics from 770,000 vials of saliva.  It contains the migratory history of the genes found in groups of people as they settled, or were settled, into specific regions over the last 9 generations.  The strong patterning reflects real differences in genetic ancestry, and with those differences, there are, no doubt, also differences in the genetic risk of specific diseases, disorders, conditions, and susceptibilities.

Source: Ancestry.com

An entire field of Phamarcogenomics (PGX) has been focusing on understanding how genes, geography, and histories of human populations might be useful toward tailoring  (see review of human loci involved in drug biotransformation by Maisano and Fueselli, 2013).

The study that produced the data for this map, published in Nature Communications by Han et al., 2017, entitled “Clustering of 770,000 genomes reveals post-colonial population structure of North America“, sought to find a reveal any patterns that might be useful in understanding the geographic distribution of peoples – and which genetic divisions explain the largest regional differences in genetics.  Among notable details, the genes reflect the re-location of the Acadians from Canada to Louisiana; they reveal admixture, and, importantly, differences that pre-date the actual migratory patterns, reflecting ancestral variation from the homelands of immigrants to the US.  Remarkably, the differences have persisted.

What does this have to do with vaccines?  Vaccine safety science should come into the 1990’s (it’s now 2017) in which geographic variation due to genetic variation should be considered when rolling out public health policies. Genetic variation has been found to be related to variation in drug responses (e.g., Madian, 2012), who cited that genetic variation that contributes to differences in efficacy of ticagrelor, a platelet aggregation inhibitor produced by AstraZeneca, might be useful in predicting who would benefit from the drug.  They wrote:

“There may be other unknown variants that could affect the efficacy of ticagrelor. Identifying these variants would allow clinicians to better individualize treatment according to the needs of the each patient.”

Now let’s think about vaccine safety.  Since the bulk of the evidence supports that risk of vaccine adverse events, especially neurological and immunological adverse events, has a genetic and familial susceptibility, it would seem quite likely that genetic variants will be found that can be used to individualize vaccine schedule.  Studies of suspected and known serious and moderate adverse events (encephalopathy, SIDS, anaphylaxis, Guillain-Barré) should seek geographical and genetic association of risk based on these ancestral diaspora to determine if we might be able readily predict specific vaccine tolerance based on genetics.

To that end, the Neurodevelopment Research Reform Consortium and IPAK have released a major technical report entitled “The Case for Vaccine Safety Screening”.

Reviewed in this report:

• The history of how our society arrived at the point where mechanisms such as ridicule, coercion, denial of access to health care and loss of employment, willfully misleading statements about vaccine exemption rights, and vaccine mandates are now seen as necessary to convince the public to participate in the national vaccine program.

• The links between vaccines and neurologic and immunologic injuries.

• Recognized and ignored contraindications for vaccination

• The relationship between neonatal vaccination practices and the high rate of respiratory distress and SIDS in neonates.