Swine Flu Vaccine Causes Rare Disease
(ePharmaNews)
The swine flu epidemic in 2009 has caused a shocking panic all over the world, but, fortunately, researchers found an effective vaccine in the same year. WHO issued clear instructions to deploy the vaccine, but new studies conducted to discuss the side effects associated with the vaccine showed that it may lead to an increased risk of a neurological illness called "Narcolepsy.
Narcolepsy disorder is a rare disease that affects people between the ages of 15 to 25 years, it is characterized by sleeping for long intermittent periods with episodes of involuntarily sleep during the day, narcolepsy may occur with any activity.
Doctors have noticed increasing incidence of this disease during the last three years, which made a team of researchers at Department of Vaccines and Immune Protection, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland to conduct a study included all people 4-21 year-old in Finland to test the theory of linkage between swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy.
The results, that published today in PLoS journal, showed that the incidence of narcolepsy disorder in children who received the vaccine was higher by about 13 times compared to children who did not, counting to 9 cases per 100 thousand children, while it occur in only 7 cases per million children unvaccinated, and the rate increased in vaccinated group to reach one case per 16 thousand people at the age of 19.
The main author of the study, Dr. Hanna Nohynek said: “Pandemrix vaccine contributed to the onset of narcolepsy among those 4 to 19 years old during the pandemic influenza in 2009–2010 in Finland.
The role of the adjuvant in particular warrants further research before drawing conclusions about the use of adjuvanted pandemic vaccines in the future.
It should be noted that this study is not the first of its kind, during the last two years a group of research projects studied the role of the swine flu vaccine in raising the risk of Narcolepsy disorder and all of the studies agreed on the association, with different level of risk
The researchers concluded: 'We consider it likely that Pandemrix vaccination contributed, perhaps together with other environmental factors, to this increase in genetically susceptible children.