Can having hepatitis B immunisation cause MS?
There has been a lot of conjecture about whether getting immunised against hepatitis B increases the risk of getting MS. Hepatitis B vaccine is genetically engineered and has been available since the 1980s. It is considered to be well tolerated by people, although there have been many reports of increased risk of MS associated with the immunisation. A large case-control study from the US tested whether this was by chance, and found an alarming increase in the risk for several major autoimmune diseases, including MS. People getting hepatitis B vaccination were 5.2 times more likely to be diagnosed with MS than controls who were not vaccinated.1 This is supported by a US case-control study which showed that people with MS were 3.1 times more likely to have been vaccinated in the three years prior to onset of symptoms than controls who did not have MS.2 To confirm that this was a real effect specific to hepatitis vaccination, they checked whether tetanus or influenza vaccination resulted
