MADISON (WPR) Wisconsin vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella are higher than the national average, despite long-standing worries over whether such shots were safe.

A long health and public relations battle over the supposed link between a certain vaccine and autism made news again this past week. The medical journal, The Lancet, retracted a 1998 study linking measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism.

Six years later, 10 of 13 authors said there was insufficient evidence, and the Institute of Medicine also rejected such a link. 

State epidemiologist Jeffrey Davis says Wisconsin maintained high MMR vaccination rates throughout the controversy. He says in seven of the last eight years, 90-percent of Wisconsin children have been vaccinated.

Davis says Wisconsin has averaged only one case of measles a year in the last decade. There was a national outbreak of measles in 2008 and it did affect the state, when two people contracted measles.

That outbreak of measles affected more than a dozen states and was the largest in 10 years.

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Information from Wisconsin Public Radio, www.wpr.org