Children's narcolepsy connected to GSK flu shot?

[Ronja]

And to further muddle the waters - narcolepsy and related "sleepy sickness" like conditions are one possible after-effect of influenza itself. If anyone has read Olive Sachs' book "Awakenings" or seen the film based on it (with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro), - I mean I am freezing when I write this just to think of it. There were many people lost to the world, themselves, and life in general that way after the Spanish Flu. No epidemic has been seen since. And nobody could explain the connection - nobody still can. Is there really any way to calculate the risks proper? Yet, without herd immunity against influenza, I am afraid the cases of narcolepsy & Co. could easily be more numerous than now.

More here about the illness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica
the book http://www.oliversacks.com/books/awakenings/
and the film http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099077/

[JimC]

The information would not cause me to reconsider a flu shot for my children, even if I was a Scandinavian...

Statistics and their interpretation are vital studies in school, IMO...

[Ronja]

Ok, I am too tired to read all about it so I´ll just ask. Is it bound to being in the genes of the child? Or is that just a part of the factor?
According to news of cases here in Iceland the chances are a lot higher than 1:200,000

I don't think anybody knows yet. There are several possibilities, at least:
-there was something different about the shipments of vaccine that came to the Nordic countries: different production batch, different environmental conditions during transport, different length of storage, different routines in administering the shot...
-there is something different in the genetic make-up of Finns, Swedes and Icelanders (likely to do with isolated populations and recessive genes - the absence of Norwegians could well be explained with the influx of genes from the British Isles and even the Mediterranean area, brought during several centuries by wooing, slave-rading, and slave-trading Vikings)
-there is some environmental factor (diet, vitamin D, temperature stress, whatever) common for Finns, Swedes and Icelanders
-something else
-a multi-factor effect of a combination of factors (e.g. both some genetic and some environmental factor was present at the same time)

It is also possible that there have been cases elsewhere, but Finland, Sweden and Iceland have been the first to report. One perplexing thing is that at least I have not heard of one adult case of narcolepsy. Does that mean that the risk should be calculated specifically for kids, based on the number of kids vaccinated (not the whole vaccinated population)? In Finland at least that would mean 50 extra cases of narcolepsy among 500,000 vaccinated kids, which is a very high vaccination related risk: 1:10,000.

In summary: at the moment we do not know. We may never know for certain.

[Tero]

I still think a double blind study is needed before the next pandemic. Separate the two vaccinations, that way they can be looked at individually.

[JOZeldenrust]

thread is useless without p value.