Thimerosal Not Linked to Cognitive Performance

The weight of the evidence in this study does not support a causal association between early exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines and immune globulins administered prenatally or during infancy and neuropsychological functioning at the age of 7 to 10 years,” they concluded. “The overall pattern of results suggests that the significant associations may have been chance findings stemming from the large number of statistical tests that we performed.”

Dr. Schuchat said that chance alone could explain these significant findings since a large number (378) of individual statistical comparisons were performed.

The authors disclosed some financial ties to vaccine manufacturers; Dr. Thompson is a former employee of Merck & Co.

Thimerosal has been removed from childhood vaccines, except for flu vaccines.