H1N1 vaccine and narcolepsy?!

You have incomplete information.

The "several" countries are: Finland, Sweden and Iceland. It is a very specific age group that's being affected (4-19, but mostly 5-15) and Iceland has found a higher than normal rate of narcolepsy in the unvaccinated children as well.

Many more countries than those three use the same vaccine and haven't had any problems.

The data is preliminary and further investigation is required. Clearly other factors are involved.

Edit: Dr. T, reports are to be expected. A lot of people get vaccinated, some are bound to get narcolepsy afterward by chance alone. What is strange is the high incidence rate found in these Nordic countries, but not elswhere.

http://www.thl.fi/en_US/web/en/pressrele…

Edit: Hi Rhianna!

Not at all true

"Recently, Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare published data that suggests children who received the H1N1 vaccine were 9 times more likely to develop narcolepsy. Apparently SEVERAL countries are reporting similar data."

Let's see the peer reviewed studies. Not kook websites.

Come on, this has been done to death and I am amazed you are post such nonsense in the form of a non-question. Peer reviewed studies state this is not the case.

PubMed

What Frank said. Correlation isn't causation. Even if the vaccine is responsible for those events, the vaccine has saved the lives of many more.

However, just to point out, this is actually an example of how safe vaccination programs are in regard to safety surveillance. Increased rates of narcolepsy were reported and the matter is being investigated.

Those papers you linked support the safety of the vaccine.

Edit Dr T, We have been using that adjuvant in Europe for many years, it has a very impressive safety profile. And I've been through that animal study with you before.

Hi Nate!

Correlation does not imply causation.

Other countries using the same vaccine have not noticed this, which strongly implies the vaccine has nothing to do with it.

Vaccines are easy to blame given that they are recorded events.

Nate - those countries have highest incidence. But other countries are reporting narcolepsy after vaccination, including Canada (though only 2 cases. And only in Quebec [if that means anything.])

"The WHO said there have been reports of post-vaccination narcolepsy in at least 12 of the 47 countries where the Pandemrix vaccine (a product of GlaxoSmithKline PLC) was used, but the problem was most acute in Nordic countries such as Finland, Sweden and Iceland."

If anything, I'd look at the adjuvant. The manufacturer's pre-market animal testing yielded a bunch of wonky findings with the adjuvant.

Association is not causation. People who carry certain genetic markers have an increased chance of developing narcolepsy. Patients who have narcolepsy usually are first diagnosed in childhood because that is when the disease first manifests. Children also get immunizations and dolls. It doesn't mean that the immunizations caused the narcolepsy any more than the dolls.

162 cases of narcolepsy have been reported of the 31 million who were immunized. Just because those 162 cases started after children were immunized does not mean that the vaccine caused the narcolepsy. Those numbers are worldwide.

Worldwide, about 25,000 have been killed by H1N1.

Even if better evidence is found of causation, saving 25,000 lives at the cost of 162 cases of narcolepsy is still a good deal.

But that causation has hardly been proved. It has only been suggested by the timing, and that's a very bad way to examine causation. With time, better studies will compare children who got the vaccine to children who did not. They will follow the children long enough to find out if there is a difference of incidence of narcolepsy, and if there is an increase, whether it is an increase in incidence or just causing an earlier onset.

Again, we currenly only have a suggestion that there might be an association because children get vaccines and children get narcolepsy. Much more work has to be done, and even if all 162 cases are found to be directly cuased in children who would otherwise not have developed narcolepsy, that's still better than letting 25,000 people die.

To be absolutely safe, no one should be getting this vaccine UNTIL someone figures out WHY this is happening. It's unconscionable to continue to peddle a product with known harmful effects, and in this case, more than the usual that we've come to expect from pharma products.
Girls/young women are becoming paralysed and quite a number have died following Gardasil injections as well. Most adverse vaccine reactions go unreported.
More info. at the National Vaccine Info. Centre.