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No risk for Guillain-Barré syndrome found after vaccination
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New data published in Clinical Infectious Diseases provided no evidence that there is an increased risk for Guillain-Barré syndrome after receiving any type of vaccination.
“Because of findings almost 40 years ago, patients and medical providers have worried that many different vaccines might stimulate the development of Guillain-Barré syndrome,” Roger Baxter, MD, of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, Calif., told Infectious Disease News. “Vaccines are safe in this regard, and worries about Guillain-Barré syndrome should not deter a person from getting immunized.”
Roger Baxter
Baxter and colleagues conducted a retrospective study of 415 patients who had a first occurrence of Guillain-Barré syndrome from 1994 to October 2006. The incidence rate was 1.27 per 100,000 person-years. There were more cases of the syndrome in the winter months, and the incidence peaked in March.
Only 25 of the 415 patients had received any vaccine in the 6 weeks before the onset of Guillain-Barré syndrome. In case-centered analyses using 6-week and 10-week intervals, there was no association between any vaccibe and the onset of Guillain-Barré syndrome.
“This was a very large study population over many years, with more than 30 million person-years, and it did not include the 1976 or 2009 swine flu vaccines,” Baxter said. “We did not find any association between any vaccines and the subsequent development of Guillain-Barré syndrome. These results were very reassuring.”
Disclosure: Baxter reported receiving research grants from GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Protein Sciences and Sanofi-Pasteur.
Perspective
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William Schaffner, MD
The major focus of Guillain-Barré syndrome as a consequence of vaccination has been with influenza vaccine. The small, attributable risk is about 1 case per 1,000,000 vaccinations, a risk that is outweighed tremendously by all the benefit conferred on the population with the influenza vaccine. This is a very well-done study by experienced investigators. It was conducted in a population where there are excellent medical records, and it was possible to determine, using the most rigorous criteria, whether patients did or did not have Guillain-Barré syndrome. This study encompasses about 30 million person-years of experience, so there is confidence that adverse events and associations, if present, would have shown up. This is a large study, and it provides terrific reassurance that if there is a risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, it is extremely small.
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