UK Armed Forces In Iraq: Multiple Vaccines Not Responsible For Health Problems

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Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 03 Jul 2008 - 0:00 PST

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Service personnel deployed to Iraq have not suffered ill health due to multiple vaccinations, according to a study released on July 1, 2008 in BMJ.

Debate related to the impact that multiple vaccinations may have had on the health of veterans of the Gulf War will only be fueled by this new information. Before deployment to Iraq in 2003 and later, vaccines against tetanus, typhoid, and yellow fever are routinely administered to service personnel. Additionally, anthrax was offered to subjects who signed their consent. Several studies have shown conflicting data connecting self-reported multiple vaccinations in service personnel to poor health. According to the team publishing this new study, based at King's College London, this misperception is probably due to a "recall bias," in which victims are link their perception of ill health to the memory of multiple vaccinations.

The team, led by Dominic Murphy and colleagues examined 4,882 United Kingdom military personnel who had been to Iraq since 2003. A detailed questionnaire was completed by each subject which inquired about the maximum number of vaccines given in any one day in the preparations for deployment. Subsequently, 10% of the subjects were randomly selected for a medical record assessment to evaluate any adverse health effects reported at that time.

In this analysis, the association between a recollection of two or more vaccinations in one day and complaints of fatigue, common mental disorders, and several physical symptoms. However, when they examined the medical records themselves, there were no health disparities between those who had received one vaccination and those who had received multiple vaccinations in one day. In light of this, the examined records of soldiers who reported the latter were more likelyto report poor health.

Additionally, the researchers claimed that military personnel's memories of the actual number of vaccinations given in a day "cannot be considered reliable," unless they only experienced a single vaccination.

When considering these findings and combining the impact of this "recall bias,"the researchers claim that "there is no evidence that receiving multiple vaccinations has resulted in adverse health for UK service personnel deployed to Iraq since 2003."

Multiple vaccinations, health, and recall bias within UK armed forces deployed to Iraq: cohort study
Dominic Murphy, Matthew Hotopf, Simon Wessely
BMJ 2008:1-4
doi: 10.1136/bmj.a220
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Written by Anna Sophia McKenney
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