When assessing adjuvant toxicity in children, several key points ought to be considered: (i) infants and children should not be viewed as ‘‘small adults’’with regard to toxicological risk as their unique physiology makes them much more vulnerable to toxic insults; (ii) in adult humans Al vaccine adjuvants have been linked to a variety of serious autoimmune and inflammatory conditions (i.e., ‘‘ASIA’’), yet children are regularly exposed to much higher amounts of Al from vaccines than adults; (iii) it is often assumed that peripheral immune responses do not affect brain function. However, it is now clearly established that there is a bidirectional neuro-immune cross-talk that plays crucial roles in immunoregulation as well as brain function. In turn, perturbations of the neuro-immune axis have been demonstrated in many autoimmune diseases encompassed in ‘‘ASIA’’ and are thought to be driven by a hyperactive immune response; and (iv) the same components of the neuroimmune axis that play key roles in brain development and immune function are heavily targeted by Al adjuvants. DOWNLOAD PAPER…
