Autoimmune Disease and Vaccinations

Larry A. Law

​One of the key abilities of the immune system is its capacity to determine when something foreign has entered the body. The immune system can detect what belongs to the body and what does not. The sugars of glycobiology (the science which studies sugar) play a critical role in this determination. The immune system is able to distinguish what is self from what is non-self. Every cell in the human body has glycoproteins or glycolipids on the surface of the cell's outer membrane (called the glycocalyx). Sugars married to proteins (glycoproteins) or fatty acids called lipids (glycolipids) serve as antennas protruding from the glycocalyx. Before the advent of the field of glycobiology, the medical community referred to these structures as antigens because the immune system often responded in negative ways which doctors did not understand. 

For example, the difference between type A blood and type B is only one tiny sugar on the glycolipid of a red blood cell. But death was the result if the wrong blood type was transfused. The body pays very close attention to the location and position of these sugars! These sugar antennas facilitate communication with other cells and with the immune system. Some of these sugar-coded antennas serve as the fingerprint and identify the cell as belonging to the body (self). If the immune system encounters foreign cells (bacteria, viruses, etc.) which also have sugars but do not possess the unique identification for the person's body, then the immune system will attack, disable the invader, and remove it. 

Sometimes, when the body's immune system miscommunicates or misreads these structures, the body can become primed against a component of the body itself. This can lead to an autoimmune disease. If the immune system becomes primed against a harmless environmental agent, it leads to the development of an allergy. Researchers now know that both problems (autoimmunity and allergies) can result from receiving a vaccination. When a vaccination is administered, it creates an artificial activation of an intense immune response. Researchers have shown that this response can be cross-reactive. This means the body may become sensitized to multiple antigens from a single vaccine. This may include parts of the body's own tissue, harmless additions in the vaccine like egg protein, or even cause allergies to particular foods that were eaten close to the time when the vaccination occurred. 

Researchers have zeroed in on aluminum adjuvants present in subunit and inactivated vaccines (see blog article from Feb 9th, 2021 for more information on these two types of vaccinations). Since these vaccines are too weak to induce an adequate immune response by themselves, the heavy metal aluminum is added to stir up a hornet's nest of inflammatory activity within the body. This can lead to an autoimmune condition called autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA). Immune system cells can become self-reactive, meaning they mistake parts of the body as foreign--and therefore attack. This is classic autoimmune disease.

The body has a natural screening process to eliminate self-reactive immune system cells that are confused about what to attack. However, the introduction of a foreign adjuvant, like the metal aluminum, along with the active component of the vaccine creates abnormal conditions within the immune system. This huge overstimulation of the immune system by the vaccine can allow some of the self-reactive immune cells to slip through the cracks of that screening process. This leads directly to autoimmune disease. 

Animal studies have clearly demonstrated that the heightened immune activation produced by vaccine adjuvants does cause some self-reactive immune cells to become activated. Since self-antigens are not cleared from the body in the same way normal antigens are, if a self-reactive cell is allowed to replicate, the activation quickly turns into chronic disease. Chronic inflammation creates a feedback loop that heightens the pathology of the disorder by releasing more self-antigens; tissue continues to become damaged and more innate immune cells are recruited to the site of the growing inflammation. The vast majority of autoimmune disease result from antibodies created by the immune system. New antibodies against the disease are precisely what a vaccination is trying to create in excessive amounts. The science now proves that the biological process involved in the production of vaccine-created antibodies directly relates to  the creation of antibodies within our own body, thereby causing autoimmune disease. 

Since autoimmune disease develops over an extended period of time, the chronology of their development is difficult to document. Vaccine manufacturers are loathe to investigate any connection between vaccines and autoimmunity. But there is no longer any doubt that the primary underlying mechanism of auto-reactivity has been causally associated with vaccines. Virtually all types of vaccines are implicated with autoimmune disease onset. This finding will also apply to COVID-19 vaccines as well. Unfortunately, by the time the exact biological pathway is ascertained, it will be too late for millions of people who were already vaccinated. They will not be happy to have traded a relatively benign disease, whose recovery and cure is virtually assured for 99.8% of the population, for a far more serious disease that has no known cure.

​References: 1) Perricone C, Colafrancesco A, et al. Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA). Journal of Autoimmunity, 47 (2013) 1-16; 2) Shoenfeld Y, Agmon-Levin N, et al. 'ASIA.' Journal of Autoimmunity, 36(1) (2011 Feb):4-8; 3) Miller NZ. Miller's Review of Critical Vaccine Studies. Santa Fe: New Atlantean Press, 2016.