Bloomberg News (3/13, Bennett) reports, "Vaccines for the 2009 swine flu virus carry a small increased risk of a rare paralyzing disease, though the benefits of the shots far outweigh their risks, according to a study funded by the US government." The survey of 23 million people in the US who were vaccinated against the H1N1 virus concluded "there were 77 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, or about 1.6 extra cases for every one million people vaccinated," according to researchers led by Daniel Salmon at the US National Vaccine Program Office. In the online version of The Lancet medical journal, the researchers wrote, "We cannot predict with certainty who will contract influenza, who will have a serious complication or die from the disease, or who will have a very rare but serious adverse event from the vaccine." The article adds that health officials said the general public "should be assured" that the vaccine's benefits "outweigh its risks."
MedPage Today (3/13, Smith) explains the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic "led to the largest mass vaccination initiative in recent US history and was accompanied by a ramped-up safety surveillance system, which early on detected a signal of excess cases of Guillain-Barré." MedPage Today notes that the study's findings "might also be confounded by other factors, such as seasonality and upper-respiratory tract infection."
No comments:
Post a Comment