Me the Infection Risk
July 21, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
So the BBC news reports that I, parent of an autistic child, am an “infection risk,” from a study in the July 1st Brain, Behavior and Immunity on Parental caregivers of children with developmental disabilities mount a poor antibody response to pneumococcal vaccination.”
(Does that mean autism parents are parasites?)
30 parents of children with developmental disabilities and 29 parents of typically developing children completed “standard measures of depression, perceived stress, social support, caregiver burden, and child problem behaviours,” as well as providing a blood sample and being vaccinated with a pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine. Blood samples were also taken at 1- and 6-month follow-ups and parents of children with developmental disabilities “mounted a poorer antibody response to vaccination than control parents at both follow-ups.”
Study leader Stephen Gallagher [of the University of Birmingham] said low levels of antibodies suggested parents’ ability to fight infection was weaker: “This is a good indication that their immune systems are not functioning efficiently.”
Stress was likely to be responsible for the immune deficiency, he added.
“These parents are sometimes extremely stressed and what they need is appropriate help and training.”
Co-author Dr Anna Phillips said parents caring for these children are “incredibly dedicated” and not in a position to take time off.
With all due respect, can’t say this study’s findings surprised me. While my son, and taking care of him, are not a burden, yes, life is very busy, very hectic and my husband and I are forever scrambling for babysitters etc.—-circumstances that I suspect are the case for many families with autistic children. If the study can help to further arguments for more services like childcare and afterschool care for special needs children, and imagine having someone to watch one’s child, even for an hour or two, if you’re sick or tired and can catch a fraction of forty winks. (Just imagine.)
As for parents of special needs being weakened in their ability to fight infections, all the more argument to take of ourselves.
(A task which, too often, seems the hardest of all.)
No surprise here! I rarely get sick, but when I do I am down for the count for a week, can barely get up to use the bathroom. Once actually slept in the bathroom b/c it was to far to walk. I think my body knows it can’t get sick because even if I do, my husb still has to work and L and K still need to be taken care of. Jeff actually uses most of his sick time when I get sick. He rarely gets more than the occasional cold, but if I come down with something, my body just starts turning off stuff until I admit defeat and go to bed. Then Jeff stays home to take care of L and K. I have always been like that, though. In college I almost never got the colds and flu that made the rounds. But every winter and spring break you could almost predict that I would be in bed with a 103 fever for a week. Every year, for 4 years! No trips to Cancun or Daytona for ME!!!!
Really?!? Stress lowers defenses, special needs add stress, did they really need a study to figure this one out?
I bet the same holds true for parents vs. non-parents, as well. Oh, what a difference a child makes! (But well worth it!)
Yes, stress is a reasonable conjecture, but if HHV-6 is the key to autism, it is possible that parents of autistic children are also struggling with the immunological consequences of HHV-6 infection.
If a parent who has some problem associated with HHV-6 like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, MS, diabetes (or a wide array of other medical problems) has an autistic child with HHV-6 issues, it would suggest that more attention should be paid to this dynamic neuroimmunological virus.
“Stress was likely to be responsible for the immune deficiency, he added.”
Correlation does not prove causation.
The quote about stress probably being responsible for the immune deficiency struck me as a bit misleading, because the one variable that the article presents as apparently mediating the immune response was actually child behavior, rather than depression or perceived stress or caregiver burden. Here’s the exact quote:
“Of the variables considered it would appear to be child problem behaviour which mediated this effect.”
Then they go looking for what they expected to find:
“Although neither perceived stress nor caregiver burden accounted for the differences between groups in antibody responses they correlated highly with child behaviour problems in the sample as a whole, as well as within the caregiving group.” — Consolation prize, which lets them pretend they actually did find what they expected?
Anecdotally for myself, I felt that my defenses were down in a whole lot of ways when my kiddo’s behavior problems were peaking. Other than that span of time, though, I don’t know that I’ve been any sicker since I’ve been the parent of a special needs child than when I was just the parent of a neurotypical child, other than that the addition of child #2 to the household added one more disease vector for any virus that was going to come a-calling…
That’s the second reference I’ve seen this weekend to diabetes being a factor.
I’m with xtiluv on this one.
Oops I meant ‘week’ not ‘weekend’ = where does the time go?
Cheers
From the BBC,
“…Charities called for better support for parents struggling to cope.
Previous work has shown negative effects in elderly people caring for a spouse – but this is the first time that a similar result has been seen in a younger, healthier group providing round-the-clock care, the researchers pointed out…”
Get worn out, have a higher probability of getting sick or not efficiently fighting illness. I may not be reading this right, but it doesn’t seem a gigantic news flash. Respite would be good, but some respite systems seem to carry some stressors of their own.
I haven’t read the paper, but I am curious about the nature of the stressors or specific variables–generalized anxiety takes the mickey out of me a lot more than being busy and hectic, even though the latter is far more physically demanding.
I pickup just about everything which goes around, though they rarely drives me to bed nor keeps me from work. My wife is very, very, very rarely sick. Even if I pickup something which does knock off my feet, she does not even get a sniffle. My daughter is also rarely sick.
Perhaps my wife feels less stress; though. that’s hard to imagine as she has to put up with me.
Since there is talk of people with autism having immune problems, might this research indicate that some of the parents are part of the broader autism phenotype and have some immune issues?