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Experimental lupus therapy could be ‘life-changing’ for patients with autoimmune disease, study finds

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Experimental lupus therapy could be ‘life-changing’ for patients with autoimmune disease, study finds

Australian researchers may have found a breakthrough treatment for lupus.

In a study published in Nature Communications on Feb. 6, scientists at Monash University revealed that they were able to “fix” defective cells that can cause lupus, an autoimmune disease.

They accomplished this by infusing human cells — called regulatory T cells — harvested from healthy people, which then triggered a protective mechanism that helps to prevent autoimmunity, according to a press release from the university.

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People who develop lupus and other autoimmune disorders lack these special T cells.

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“We’ve figured out a way to fix a defect that causes lupus,” Peter Eggenhuizen, a research fellow at Monash University and co-first author of the study, told Fox News Digital.

Common symptoms of lupus include joint pain, extreme fatigue, joint pain or a butterfly rash. (iStock)

“We achieved this by engineering patient cells with protective molecules from healthy people. In preclinical models, this halted lupus kidney disease progression.”

The research was performed in both test tubes and in mouse models.

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The researchers were surprised to discover that the infused patient cells,enhanced with protective molecules, suppressed lupus without the need for toxic immunosuppressant drugs.

“New technologies using T regulatory cells as therapy for lupus and other autoimmune conditions are emerging and herald a new generation of personalized medicine,” Eggenhuizen said. 

Kidney ultrasound

An experimental therapy was able to “completely arrest” the development of lupus kidney disease without using potentially harmful immunosuppressant drugs, said researchers (not pictured).  (iStock)

Co-senior author Joshua Ooi, an associate professor who heads Monash University’s Regulatory T Cell Therapies Group at Monash Health, said the new therapy was able to “completely arrest” the development of lupus kidney disease. 

“It’s like a reset of the abnormal immune system back to a healthy state — kind of like a major software upgrade,” Ooi said in the press release. 

“That it uses the patient’s own cells is a very special part of this.”

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AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE: A BODY AT WAR WITH ITSELF

Beyond treating lupus, the researchers hope that the targeted T regulatory cell therapy can be used eventually as a therapy for over 100 other autoimmune conditions, including diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. 

Although these initial findings are promising, the researcher emphasized that this work is at the pre-clinical stage

Lupus awareness

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease that impacts some 1.5 million people in the U.S. (iStock)

“Two years of additional research and development is required before the first human clinical trials can commence,” he said.

Human clinical trials are expected to start in 2026 to determine the viability of the experimental treatment method.

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Dr. Emily Littlejohn, a rheumatologist and lupus expert from Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, was not involved in the clinical studies but said the proposed treatment looks “promising” as a possible therapy for certain lupus patients.

“This Australian group from Monash University was able to halt the progression of lupus nephritis in a lupus mouse model,” she told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

“Lupus nephritis is one of the most devastating manifestations of systemic lupus, and this therapy could prove to be life-changing for many of our patients.”

Sick woman

Lupus is more common among women between 15 and 44 years of age and people who are African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, or Pacific Islander, according to the Lupus Foundation. (iStock)

Because this study was done in vitro and in lupus nephritis mouse models, Littlejohn noted that it’s very difficult to make presumptions about how this therapy will perform in humans with lupus.  

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“It will be interesting to see how this treatment translates in clinical trials using human patients,” she added.

Current treatments for lupus include disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, or DMARDs, in addition to biologic agents, which are immunosuppressive therapies in either tablet, injection or infusion form, Littlejohn noted. 

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“While these drugs have proven to be useful to treat and prevent progression of lupus, we still do not have ample success rates in treating patients with lupus nephritis,” she said. “We are looking forward to the up-and-coming drug trials that are ongoing in this space for treatment of different forms of systemic lupus.”

What to know about lupus

Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks healthy tissue in the body, which causes inflammation and pain in the body, according to the Lupus Foundation of America’s website.

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The disease most often affects the joints, skin and major organs, such as the kidneys and heart. 

Common symptoms include joint pain, extreme fatigue, joint pain or a butterfly rash.

Back pain in bed

The disease most often affects the joints, skin and major organs, such as the kidneys and heart. (iStock)

There are four different types of lupus, as detailed on the foundation’s website.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the most common form, affects multiple organs or organ systems.

Cutaneous lupus only affects the skin, while drug-induced lupus is triggered by specific prescription drugs.

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Neonatal lupus is a rare condition that is passed from a pregnant woman to her infant.

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Lupus can run in families, and it’s also more common among women between 15 and 44 years of age and people who are African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, or Pacific Islander, according to the same foundation.

The disease affects approximately 1.5 million people in the U.S.

medications and lab tests

Although these initial findings are promising, the researcher emphasized that this work is at the pre-clinical stage.  (iStock)

“Systemic lupus is a life-threatening and difficult-to-treat disease,” said Littlejohn. 

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“Given the variety of manifestations of this disease and the wide range of clinical symptoms, having more treatment options will only help improve disease outcomes and quality of life in these patients.”

With dozens of new drugs in various stages of clinical trial, Littlejohn said this is an “exciting time” for drug development in systemic lupus.

“The ongoing scientific work and treatment development breakthroughs, such as the one put forth in this article, are wonderful to see.”

For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews.com/health.

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Derek Humphry, Pivotal Figure in Right-to-Die Movement, Dies at 94

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Derek Humphry, Pivotal Figure in Right-to-Die Movement, Dies at 94

Derek Humphry, a British-born journalist whose experience helping his terminally-ill wife end her life led him to become a crusading pioneer in the right-to-die movement and publish “Final Exit,” a best-selling guide to suicide, died on Jan. 2 in Eugene, Ore. He was 94.

His death, at a hospice facility, was announced by his family.

With a populist flair and a knack for speaking matter-of-factly about death, Mr. Humphry almost single-handedly galvanized a national conversation about physician-assisted suicide in the early 1980s, a period when the idea had been little more than an esoteric theory batted around by medical ethicists.

“He was the one who really put this cause on the map in America,” said Ian Dowbiggin, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and the author of “A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine” (2005). “The people who support the notion of physician assisted suicide absolutely owe him a big thanks.”

In 1975, Mr. Humphry was working as a reporter for The Sunday Times of London when Jean Humphry, his wife of 22 years, was in the final stages of terminal bone cancer. Hoping to avoid prolonged suffering, she asked him to help her die.

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Mr. Humphry procured a lethal dose of painkillers from a sympathetic doctor and mixed them with coffee in her favorite mug.

“I took her the mug and told her if she drank it she’d die immediately,” Mr. Humphry told The Daily Record in Scotland. “Then I gave her a hug, kissed her and we said our goodbyes.”

Credit…Norris Lane Press

Mr. Humphry chronicled the emotional, taboo and legally-fraught pursuit of his wife’s hastened death in “Jean’s Way” (1979). The book, excerpted in newspapers around the world, was a sensation. Readers sent letters to the editor discussing the suffering of their loved ones. Many wrote directly to Mr. Humphry.

“I wish we had a solution like yours,” a woman wrote, describing her husband’s last eight weeks of life as “a horror.” “How much more beautiful, how much more ‘love.’ We did what others forced us to do and experienced that dreadful ‘death’ the medical world gives by prolonging life in every possible way.”

In their letters, some readers pleaded for instructions to help their loved ones die. That prompted Mr. Humphry, by then remarried and working in California for The Los Angeles Times, to think about creating an organization to advocate for assisted suicide and end-of-life rights for the terminally ill.

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Ann Wickett Humphry, his second wife, suggested using Hemlock as a title, “arguing that most Americans associate the word with the death of Socrates, a man who discussed and planned his death,” Mr. Humphry later wrote in an updated edition of “Jean’s Way.”

In August 1980, they rented the Los Angeles Press Club to announce the establishment of the Hemlock Society, which they ran out of the garage of their Santa Monica home.

The organization grew quickly. In 1981, it issued “Let Me Die Before I Wake,” a guide to medicines and dosages for inducing “peaceful self-deliverance.” The group also lobbied state legislatures to enact laws making assisted suicide legal. In 1990, the Hemlock Society moved to Eugene. By then, it had more than 30,000 members, but the right-to-die conversation hadn’t yet reached most dinner tables in America.

That changed spectacularly in 1991, after Mr. Humphry published “Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying.” The book was a 192-page step-by-step guide that, in addition to explaining suicide methods, provided Miss Manners-like tips for exiting gracefully.

“If you are unfortunately obliged to end your life in a hospital or motel,” he wrote, “it is gracious to leave a note apologizing for the shock and inconvenience to the staff. I have also heard of an individual leaving a generous tip to a motel staff.”

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The book shot quickly to No. 1 in the hardcover advice category of The New York Times Best Sellers list.

“That is an indication of how large the issue of euthanasia looms in our society now,” the bioethicist Dr. Arthur Caplan told The Times in 1991. “It is frightening and disturbing, and that kind of sales figure is a shot across the bow. It is the loudest statement of protest of how medicine is dealing with terminal illness and dying.”

Reactions to “Final Exit” were generally divided along ideological lines. Conservatives blasted it.

“What can one say about this new ‘book’? In one word: evil,” the University of Chicago bioethicist Leon R. Kass wrote in Commentary magazine, calling Mr. Humphry “the Lord High Executioner.” “I did not want to read it, I do not want you to read it. It should never have been written, and it does not deserve to be dignified with a review, let alone an article.”

But progressives embraced the book, even as public health experts expressed concern that the methods it laid out could be used by depressed people who weren’t terminally ill.

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“I’ve read ‘Final Exit’ out of curiosity, but I’ll keep it for another reason — because I can imagine, having once nursed a cancer patient, the day when I might want to use it,” the New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen wrote, adding, “And if that day comes, whose business is it, really, but my own and that of those I love?”

Rather than worrying about the book’s contents, Ms. Quindlen said, “we should look for ways to insure that dignified death is available in places other than the chain bookstore at the mall.”

Derek John Humphry was born on April 29, 1930, in Bath, England. His father, Royston Martin Humphry, was a traveling salesman. His mother, Bettine (Duggan) Humphry, had been a fashion model before marrying.

After leaving school at age 15, Derek got a job as a newspaper messenger. The next year, The Bristol Evening World hired him as a reporter. He went on to report for The Manchester Evening News and The Daily Mail before moving to The Sunday Times of London and then The Los Angeles Times.

Before turning to books about death, Mr. Humphry wrote “Because They’re Black” (1971), an examination of racial discrimination written with Gus John, a Black social worker; and “Police Power and Black People” (1972), about racism and corruption in Scotland Yard.

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In his earlier journalism career in Britain, Mr. Humphry wrote books about race relations, including this one, from 1972, about racism and corruption in Scotland Yard. Credit…Panther Books

Mr. Humphry was a polarizing figure even within the right-to-die movement.

In 1990, he and Ms. Wickett Humphry divorced and fought bitterly in the news media. She called him a “fraud,” accusing him of leaving her because she had been diagnosed with cancer. Mr. Humphry denied the allegation.

“This was a very shaky marriage,” he told The New York Times in 1990. “This is extremely painful, as bad as Jean’s death. I’ve lost my home; I’ve lived in a motel for three months.”

Ms. Wickett Humphry killed herself in October of 1991.

In a video recorded the day before, she expressed misgivings about the work they had done together, including helping her parents end their lives at home.

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“I walked away from that house thinking we’re both murderers,” she said in the video, which was reviewed by The Times.

Mr. Humphry went into “damage control” mode, he told The Times. He placed a half-page advertisement in the paper explaining his side of the story.

“Sadly, for much of her life Ann was dogged by emotional problems,” the advertisement said, adding that “suicide for reasons of depression has never been part of the credo of the Hemlock.”

Ms. Wickett Humphry’s death and reservations about the right-to-die movement caused strain within the Hemlock Society. Mr. Humphry resigned as executive director in 1992 and started the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization.

The Hemlock Society eventually splintered into several new groups, including The Final Exit Network, which Mr. Humphry helped start.

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He married Gretchen Crocker in 1991. She survives him, along with three sons from his first marriage; three grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Lowrey Brown, a Final Exit Network “exit guide” who helps terminally-ill patients plan their deaths, said in an interview that her clients sometimes credit Mr. Humphry and “Final Exit” for giving them the courage to end their lives.

“It was the Hemlock Society and the book ‘Final Exit’ that really crossed the threshold of getting this into ordinary Americans living rooms as a discussion topic,” Ms. Brown said. “You could talk about it at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

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Kelly Ripa says quitting alcohol had a surprising effect on her weight

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Kelly Ripa says quitting alcohol had a surprising effect on her weight

As Dry January has some people putting down the bottle for the first month of the year, the health benefits of eliminating alcohol are in the spotlight.

But TV personality Kelly Ripa, host of ABC’s “Live with Kelly and Mark,” revealed that giving up alcohol had an unexpected effect on her.

On Wednesday’s episode, when Andy Cohen co-hosted alongside Ripa, he brought up that he is “in the middle of dry January.”

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“Usually, a little weight loss comes my way after,” he commented. “That’s not really happening yet.”

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Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa attend the 96th Annual Academy Awards on March 10, 2024, in Hollywood, California. (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

Ripa responded that when she quit drinking in 2017, she expected there to be a “windfall of weight loss.”

“Because everybody’s like, ‘Well you are going to get too skinny … you can’t afford to lose it,’” she said. “I gained 12 pounds!”

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“I don’t understand this ‘magical weight loss’ that people [imply],” she continued. “I think I just took to eating the sugars … because apparently, alcohol is like a lot of sugar.”

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In 2020, Ripa revealed to People Magazine that she and her friends decided to try a sober month back in 2017, and that she “liked the way [she] felt.”

Kelly Ripa attends Variety's 2023 Power of Women event

Kelly Ripa attends Variety’s 2023 Power of Women event at The Grill on April 4, 2023, in New York City. (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)

“Not that I was a heavy drinker — I wasn’t someone who got drunk — but even like two glasses of wine at a girl’s night out dinner, I would feel it the next morning,” she said.

“I just didn’t really feel the need or desire to go back to it,” Ripa went on. “It wasn’t really a choice or a thought, it was just, ‘Yeah, I guess I don’t drink anymore.’”

Alcohol’s impact on weight

Dr. Kathleen Jordan, Midi Health chief medical officer and women’s health and weight management specialist, shared some health benefits of eliminating or limiting alcohol, including reduced cancer risk and weight loss.

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“Less drinking eliminates the hundreds of calories in the drinks themselves (anywhere from 160 to 400 or more calories per drink) and less drinking is often accompanied by less late-night snacking,” the California-based doctor told Fox News Digital.

“Less alcohol also helps your body get a good night’s sleep, while bad sleep is associated with weight gain. Alcohol interferes with the ability to reach a deep sleep, which then contributes to daytime fatigue and sluggishness – and ultimately to weight gain.”

Person's hand rejects wine from being poured into their glass

Limiting or eliminating alcohol can have a variety of health impacts, dependent on the individual, one doctor noted. (iStock)

But limiting alcohol might not pose these benefits for everyone, Jordan noted.

If low or moderate drinkers experience weight gain after eliminating alcohol, the expert said that’s most likely due to substituting drinking with snacking or sugary mocktails.

For more Health articles, visit foxnews.com/health

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Jordan recommended replacing alcohol with different variations of water instead, including bubbly, flat or garnished water, which will satiate “nervous eating” and the habit of drinking.

Dry January also occurs when the climate is cold and dark, with most Americans tending to spend more time indoors. 

To support the benefits of not drinking and prevent weight gain, Jordan advised keeping up with physical activity even during the winter months.

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Yes, Some Vaccines Contain Aluminum. That’s a Good Thing.

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Yes, Some Vaccines Contain Aluminum. That’s a Good Thing.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has often trained his criticisms of vaccines on a common ingredient: aluminum, which he has suggested is responsible for a litany of childhood ailments, including food allergies, autism and depression.

“You wonder why a whole generation of children is allergic to stuff,” Mr. Kennedy said during a 2021 interview. “It’s because we’re inducing allergies, pumping them full of aluminum.”

To many vaccine scientists, aluminum is a strange target. It is among the most studied ingredients in vaccines, and perhaps in modern medicine.

“There’s a huge amount of information that’s gathered,” said Dr. Andrew Racine, a pediatrician and chief medical officer at the Montefiore Health System. “If there was something jumping out about a lack of safety, we would most likely have seen it someplace, and it just doesn’t appear.”

Aluminum salts, a more soluble form of the metal, are added to vaccines like the Tdap shot to bolster the body’s immune response. The ingredient has repeatedly been evaluated as a part of vaccines in clinical trials and administered in billions of doses over several decades.

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Even so, as Mr. Kennedy prepares for confirmation hearings as secretary of health and human services, many experts fear the standby will face fresh scrutiny, and may even serve as a justification for limiting access to several childhood vaccines, like the shots for hepatitis B and pneumococcal disease.

Aaron Siri, a lawyer and close ally of Mr. Kennedy, has represented clients in petitioning federal regulators to pause the distribution of more than a dozen vaccines until the makers provided more information about the amount of aluminum in the formulations.

Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Siri did not respond to requests for comment.

The origins of added aluminum in vaccines can be traced back nearly a century. In a stable on the outskirts of Paris, a young veterinarian had made a peculiar discovery: mixing tapioca into his horses’ diphtheria vaccines made them more effective.

The doctor, Gaston Ramon, had noticed that the horses who developed a minor infection at the injection site had much more robust immunity against diphtheria. He theorized that adding something to his shots that caused inflammation — ingredients he later named adjuvants, derived from the Latin root “to help” — helped induce a stronger immune response.

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After testing several candidates — including bread crumbs, petroleum jelly and rubber latex — he found success with a tapioca-laced injection, which produced slight swelling and far more antibodies.

Tapioca never caught on as an adjuvant. But in 1932, a few years after Dr. Ramon’s studies were published, the United States began including aluminum salts in diphtheria immunizations, as they were found to invoke a similar but more reliable effect.

Today, aluminum adjuvants are found in 27 routine vaccines, and nearly half of those recommended for children under 5.

This extra boost of immunity is not needed in all types of vaccines. Shots that contain a weakened form of a virus, like the measles mumps and rubella shot, or created with mRNA technology, like the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, generate strong enough immune responses on their own.

But in vaccines that contain only small fragments of the pathogen, which would garner little attention from the immune system, adjuvants help stimulate a stronger response, allowing vaccines to be given in fewer doses.

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Scientists believe that aluminum salts work in two ways. First, aluminum binds to the core component of the vaccine and causes it to diffuse into the bloodstream more slowly, giving immune cells more time to build a response.

It’s also thought that aluminum operates more directly, enhancing the activity of certain immune cells, though this mechanism is not fully understood.

Though aluminum salts are not the only adjuvants on the market, vaccine makers often prefer them because of a lengthy track record of safety data.

Each time a new vaccine that uses an aluminum adjuvant is developed, it undergoes lengthy clinical trials to evaluate its safety, and side effects are continuously monitored after approval. One of the earliest trials including an aluminum adjuvant was published in 1934.

Later trials revealed some minor side effects, like redness, body aches and, in rare cases, painful nodules at the injection site. But there is little credible evidence that aluminum in vaccines causes serious, long-term side effects, as Mr. Kennedy has suggested.

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People who are routinely exposed to large quantities of aluminum — such as workers who breathe in aluminum dust, or dialysis patients who routinely receive aluminum-rich medications — may experience respiratory, bone and neurological complications.

The amount of aluminum in childhood vaccines, however, is trivial compared with what people are routinely exposed to via the environment and food, said Dr. Tony Moody, director of the Duke CIVICs Vaccine Center.

“We’re exposed to aluminum constantly,” he said. “If you inhale dust from the outside, you’re coming into contact with aluminum.”

In the first six months of babies’ lives, vaccines expose them to roughly 4.4 milligrams of aluminum. One slice of American cheese, by contrast, can contain as much as 50 milligrams of aluminum.

When scientists compared aluminum levels in the blood and hair of babies who had been given aluminum-containing vaccines versus those who hadn’t, they found no significant difference.

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Some scientists believe that one potential side effect needs additional research.

In 2022, after a federally funded study found a minor association between aluminum exposure from vaccines and asthma, the C.D.C. noted that the link warranted “further investigation.” (The agency said it would not change vaccine recommendations “based on a single study.”)

Mr. Kennedy, who was then the chairman of Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit frequently critical of vaccines, held out the study as evidence that immunizations were causing an “asthma epidemic.”

But the authors of the paper were careful to point out the limitations of their findings, most notably that the effect was small and that the study was observational, which means it cannot prove cause-and-effect.

In the paper, they cautioned that their results “do not constitute strong evidence for questioning the safety of aluminum in vaccines.”

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Independent experts also noted that the authors did not collect data on several key risk factors, like whether the participants were exposed to cigarette smoke or had a family history of asthma — either of which could explain the difference they observed.

In response to the study, a group of researchers from the Statens Serum Institut, Denmark’s public health agency, ran a similar analysis on a national data set of more than 450,000 children.

Their preliminary results did not show an association between aluminum adjuvants and asthma, they told the C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in 2023.

Still, a C.D.C. spokeswoman said the agency was “discussing additional studies” to investigate the potential risk.

But until rigorous research can confirm the finding, the link between aluminum and asthma is tenuous at best, said Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who played a pivotal role in helping create the rubella vaccine.

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“You cannot change conclusions from any single paper,” he said. “You have to look at the overall literature.”

Anders Hviid, who led the Danish study, said he welcomed more research into the safety of adjuvants, but he added that these studies might never be enough to convince skeptics that aluminum does not cause long-term side effects.

“You cannot prove a negative,” he said. “There will always be this goal-post moving, saying, ‘Well, you didn’t look at this and you didn’t look at that in that way.’”

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