Measles vaccine doesn’t cause autism, experts say.  The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes neither autism nor gastrointestinal disorders, a study found Tuesday, disputing a theory that has persisted for a decade. The theory began in 1998, when British researcher Andrew Wakefield published studies that suggested the measles vaccine caused gastrointestinal problems and that those GI problems led to autism. Co-author W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York said Wakefield theorized that the virus used in the vaccine grew in the intestinal tract, leading to inflammation that seeped from the bowel into the blood and affected the nervous system, causing autism. In Wednesday’s study, the researchers replicated key parts of Wakefield’s original study and determined that the vaccine neither causes autism or GI problems, said Mady Hornig, a study co-author. Irish pathologist John O’Leary, who co-authored the original study. He and the other researchers looked for evidence of the measles vaccine in children’s intestines after they had been vaccinated and sought to determine if their GI problems and autism symptoms occurred before or after they were vaccinated. After studying 38 children, they found that only one child had trace amounts of the measles virus.

Vital Signs: Basketball star Grant Hill is on a mission to protect you from the flesh-eating bacteria known as MRSA. Why? Vital Signs has the details of his personal experience with the disease.

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