No Link Found Between Aluminum in Routine Vaccines and Childhood Disorders: Daily Dose

_{©New Africa/AdobeStock}

Patient Care brings primary care clinicians a lot of medical news every day—it’s easy to miss an important study. The Daily Dose provides a concise summary of one of the website's leading stories you may not have seen.

On June 15, 2025, we reported on findings from a population-wide study published in Annals of Internal Medicine that was designed to examine the association between aluminum exposure from early childhood vaccination and risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

The study

Researchers conducted a nationwide cohort study of 1 224 176 children in Denmark. They linked national health and administrative registries to capture data on vaccination history, hospital and pharmacy records, and relevant sociodemographic and medical variables. Children were excluded if they had congenital disorders, implausible vaccination patterns, or if data were missing. Children were followed from age 2 through 5 years for diagnoses of 50 chronic conditions, grouped into autoimmune, atopic/allergic, and neurodevelopmental categories.

Exposure was defined as the cumulative aluminum received via vaccines before age 2, with values ranging from 0 to 4.5 mg (median 3.0 mg). Outcomes were identified via hospital encounters or prescription records, according to the study.

The findings

The results showed that cumulative aluminum exposure from vaccination during the first 2 years of life was not associated with increased rates of any of the 50 disorders assessed. Among the most common conditions, hazard ratios were as follows:

• Asthma 0.96 (CI, 0.94 to 0.98) and atopic dermatitis 1.02 (CI, 1.00 to 1.04)

• Autism spectrum disorder 0.93 (CI, 0.89 to 0.97) and ADHD 0.90 (CI, 0.84 to 0.96).

In secondary analyses extending follow-up to age 8, estimates remained consistent, including HRs of 0.95 for autism spectrum disorder and 0.92 for ADHD.

Authors' comments

"This work was motivated by ongoing concerns about potential harms of aluminum-adsorbed nonlive vaccines...Our study, based on a nationwide cohort of about 1.2 million children with analyses across a 24-year period, offers a large-scale, population-based evaluation of the safety of aluminum-adsorbed vaccines in childhood vaccination programs."

Click here for more details.