Question from North Carolina, USA:

I have two children with type 1 and have found the studies where the childhood immunizations are not linked to type 1. I know vaccines are important and don’t question that, but I do question the timing. I have had the MMR vaccine four times, two as a baby, one when I started to work in a health care facility (1991) and titered negative, and then again after my first pregnancy (1998) because I still had a negative titer. My child born in 1998 does not have diabetes. My children born in 2000 and 2004 both do. I can’t find the long term studies where they have tested the effects of the MMR on women of child bearing age who then have children. Can you please refer me to these studies? I will feel better being able to read that women who have the MMR during childbearing years do not have an increased risk of having a child later develop type 1. I need to know that it has been looked at not just as a risk at birth (congenital rubella), but that the children born to mothers who had recently received the MMR have been followed for at least 20 years after birth.