Mistaken Identity?

[Crohnick]

I think most of our kids have had the DTap/TDaP vaccine series.

My kid had his first shot at 3 months old. If you look at his growth chart, you can see the classic drop off of weight and height velocity associated with Crohn's starting at around 4 months. I went back through his medical records and saw a note from pediatrician at his 4 month check-up of "mucus and occult blood in stool". I guess the stool issue resolved but his growth never recovered and he's always been on the bottom percentiles. We had asked pediatrician about growth and she always chalked it up to fact that since my wife was small stature he's going to be small too. And since he never really presented with any other outward symptoms and was otherwise healthy, we never did any follow up.

Fast forward about a decade and he had another drop off in his growth. About the same time as he got his TDaP booster.

Now back to my question. Tetanus is one of the components of the DTaP vaccine. I just looked it up, and Tetanus is a toxin of the bacteria Clostridium tetani. I looked into this bacteria and it's apparently one of the most common species in the gut.

What if as part of the mechanism the body develops immunity from vaccines, there was an error and you develop antibodies to some common pattern of this bacteria. From what I understand, one of the results of Crohn's is you lose some beneficial bacteria. It kind of makes sense that the body is mistakenly clearing some of these good guys and then you get into a whole host of other issues from its loss.

If you look up Tetanus vaccine, it was developed in 1924 in the U.S. and widely used on soldiers during WWII and became a common vaccination in the general population after that. From everything I've read, that's about when Crohn's started cropping up, no?

Okay, this is my next harebrained idea I'm going to pass by the GI. See how soon he'll laugh me out of the office, labeling me as a vaccine denier, which I totally am not.

 

[my little penguin]

Couple of things
Childrens growth curves are not set until age 2 for a reason
They tend to bounce all over the place
Around three months developmentally a lot things change ( intro of food -depending on the decade), tummy time etc... And a lot of kids/infants with or without gut issues later on have allergic colitis that tends to resolve on its own by age one .
Proving that action A created action C is really not that simple
A lot of enviromental factors need to be considered as well as interactions of known gene mutations .

 

[Farmwife]

Very interesting.
My Grace wasn't vaccinated until she was 5.
I do believe that theirs more than one cause of IBD.
Hopefully in the future we'll have a clearer picture.

 

[Jmrogers4]

Yeah think there must be numerous triggers my son's growth did not start to fall off until about 3rd grade, until that point he was always among the tallest in the class.
I think Crohn's has been around for a lot longer then that as well just maybe not diagnosed. It seems I have read in a couple of different articles that Charles Darwin may have possibly had Crohn's.
Our diagnostic testing has gotten better so I think many cases where they would have gone undiagnosed in the past or diagnosed as something else or now diagnosed as Crohn's.
My husband was diagnosed at 25 years old, my son at 10. What was different? Probably something we will never know but obviously there is a genetic component in our case.
Personally I believe they will figure out there a many different variations of Crohn's which may be why what works in one case doesn't work in another. Who knows?