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H1N1 flu vaccine may cause some unrelated deaths
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H1N1 swine flu vaccine and death may raise a few eyebrows when used in the same sentence, and health officials suspect that some people will assume that if death occurs after receiving the vaccine, the two are related.
To provide context, experts have combed hospital databases and population samples in Britain, Canada, Finland, the United States and elsewhere to find daily baseline rates of commonly reported events like Guillain-Barre syndrome, sudden deaths, seizures and abortions. The research was published online Saturday in the British medical journal Lancet.
They found that in Britain, for every 10 million people who might get the swine flu shot, about 22 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and 6 unexplained deaths will likely occur within 6 weeks of vaccination - and probably won't be caused by the vaccine.
In the U.S., experts expect that for every 1 million pregnant women who get the swine flu shot, 397 will have a spontaneous abortion within a day.
Only if the rates of these events exceed these baseline numbers should experts suspect the vaccine might be responsible.
In the meantime, the WHO (World Health Organization) has released updated information regarding the safety of the H1N1 2009 vaccine, and had this to say regarding any testing being done to ensure safety:
Because the pandemic virus is new, both non-clinical and clinical testing is being done to gain essential information on immune response and safety. The results of studies reported to date suggest the vaccines are as safe as seasonal influenza vaccines. However, even very large clinical studies will not be able to identify possible rare events that can become evident when pandemic vaccines are administered to many millions of people," says WHO.
"WHO advises all countries administering pandemic vaccines to conduct intensive monitoring for safety and report serious adverse events.
As far as the overall safety of the vaccine, WHO suggests that pandemic vaccines are as safe as seasonal influenza vaccines. They reitterate that, at this stage, unusual adverse events are being observed after immunization, according to clinical trials and adverse event monitoring during deployment of vaccines in early introducer countries. The need for continued vigilance and regular evaluation by health authorities is ongoing. For more information go here.
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