LAUSR

In a recent paper Ameratunga; Languth, and Hawkes [1] raised “scientific and ethical concerns” pertaining to animalmodels of autoimmunity/autoinflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) [1]. The authors have previously questioned the existence of ASIA using arguments that were dismissed [2]. Now, they try to convince the scientific community to forbid animal studies evaluating safety of aluminum adjuvants. This is a shocking recommendation (i) because there has been only one reference experimental study on aluminum adjuvants toxicokinetics [3] and it suffers major conceptual and methodological limitations [4]; (ii) because aluminum adjuvants safety has never been epidemiologically evaluated on the long term, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating “there have been no population-based studies specifically designed to evaluate associations between clinically meaningful outcomes and non-antigen vaccine ingredients, other than thimerosal” [5]; and (iii) because these poorly understood compounds used in 60% of current vaccines are intended to be administered to billions of individuals over the next years in the setting of a massive expansion of vaccine prevention strategies announced worldwide [6]. Ameratunga et al. [1] reviewed a list of animal studies said to have been conducted to demonstrate ASIA [7–17]. This selection is inadequate at least for thefirst study [7]which included no clinical evaluation because it was designed to explore and understand systemic translocation of aluminum and other biopersitent particles injected in muscle. In contrast, Ameratunga et al. omitted a number of mouse studies documenting neurologic effects of aluminum adjuvant administration [18–20]. Ameratunga et al. [1] listed several areas of concern in the evaluated studies.